Friday, April 15, 2016

In Paris Bakeries, Liberté From Gluten


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Display case at Chambelland, which sells bread made with flours like rice and buckwheat. Credit Alex Cretey-Systermans for The New York Times
Paris’s ubiquitous corner boulangeries have long been temples to gluten, with their baguettes, croissants and decadent patisseries. And yet, of all food trends, it is gluten-free that is taking hold. In Paris, you can now find bakeries selling breads and sweet creations made, as the French say, “sans gluten.” Specialized cafes offer gluten-free sandwiches, and gluten-free goods have taken over their own aisle at the supermarket.
The city’s gluten-free pioneer is the pastry chef Marie Tagliaferro, who along with her husband, François, opened Helmut Newcake (helmutnewcake.com), a pastry shop less than a 10-minute walk from the Galeries Lafayette in the Ninth Arrondissement. Ms. Tagliaferro was given a diagnosis of celiac disease while attending pastry school and wanted to offer gluten-free alternatives of French classics to people like her who can’t eat wheat. She now makes delicate fruit tarts and éclairs and even the cream-filled double-decker religieuses typical of the traditional boulangerie. Lauded for taste and texture that is indistinguishable from their gluten-dependent cousins, her take on the classics have brought tears of joy, literally, to gluten-averse customers.

“In the world of pastry, gluten-free is coming into its own,” said Ms. Tagliaferro, who also supplies cakes and pastries to hotels and restaurants in the city. She and her husband used to run a cafe in the 11th Arrondissement known for its gluten-free brunches; it closed in December, something planned before the November terrorist attacks that occurred nearby.
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Marie Tagliaferro, a pioneer in the gluten-free trend in Paris, in her shop. Credit Alex Cretey-Systermans for The New York Times
Not far from Helmut Newcake, near the Louvre, the famed French baker Eric Kayser, too, has gluten-free offerings on the Rue de l’Échelle. It took 18 months of fiddling with different flours to develop his line of bread (as well as some sweets). “For a bakery it’s disturbing to make gluten-free bread,” said Élodie de Montbron of La Maison Kayser (maison-kayser.com/en). “It’s more like a cake dough than a bread dough.” Yet she said they were motivated to bake this way because customers were begging them to do so.
You can also find artisanal leavened breads made with flours like rice and buckwheat at Chambelland (chambelland.com). It opened in the spring of 2014 in the 11th Arrondissement, in an area known for being a hub for food businesses. Nearby there’s a fishmonger, four butchers, four bakeries, a specialty food shop and a cheese merchant. The French call these businesses “commerce de bouche,” literally “business of the mouth.”

It was the culinary possibilities of baking with grains other than wheat that inspired the owners Nathaniel Doboin and Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. “With other grains you can offer another experience,” Mr. Doboin said. “It’s another aroma, another texture, another shape.”
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A gluten-free lemon cake at Chambelland. Credit Alex Cretey-Systermans for The New York Times
Mr. Teffri-Chambelland, a well-known baker, had won accolades for wheat loaves, and gluten-free was a new challenge. “This attracts the curious,” said Mr. Doboin, who left an advertising career. They even have started their own gluten-free flour mill in the south of France. At Chambelland, as at La Maison Kayser and Helmut Newcake, they don’t use the food-grade gums, starches and preservatives that are the norm in North American gluten-free products. Chambelland’s reputation for quality has drawn the attention of one of France’s most renowned chefs today. Alain Ducasse serves Chambelland’s pain aux cinq grains (the five grains being buckwheat, sunflower, gold and brown flax, poppy seed and sesame) with salted butter in two of his Parisian restaurants.

Maybe it’s the quality of these gluten-free products that helps them appeal to those who aren’t forced to eat this way. But there’s also a perception that to cut wheat from your diet is healthier. “We are the generation of bad food,” said Charlotte Rouah whose first Juice It cafe (juice-it.fr) serves gluten-free sandwiches near the Louvre. She said people of her generation — France’s millennials — were raised on trips to McDonald’s. Now their desire is for good, healthy food. So she sells fresh-pressed juice and her specialty sandwiches made with seasonal ingredients. It’s so popular that she’s recently opened a couple of lunch counters in two yoga studios.

“It’s a wave, I think coming from the U.S.,” said David Lebovitz, an expat American food blogger and cookbook author most recently of “My Paris Kitchen” (davidlebovitz.com). And yet with their typically French éclairs and leavened breads made with good ingredients, Parisians have made gluten-free their own. “A lot of people say ‘I want to see the real Paris,’” he said. “Well, here’s a part of Paris that is a little different.”
However, at least for now, there is one pastry that remains elusive to even the most talented of gluten-free bakers. The light, flaky croissant whose crispy crust and soft, almost chewy insides are too utterly dependent on gluten to replicate — that is, without adding gums, starches and preservatives that these bakers won’t use. As Ms. de Montbron put it: “You can’t try to copy everything.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 10, 2016, on page TR4 of the New York edition with the headline: In Parisian Patisseries, Liberté From Gluten.

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