A Wonder Baker!

This one of a kind bakery, Fol Epi, at 101 Harbour Road, Victoria, opened in January 2009. Fol is an old French word that, when referring to plants, means "wild." Epi means "ear of wheat."                           

Cliff Leir is the wonder-artisan baker and owner of Fol Épi.

His dense flavourful baguettes, boules, his croissants and buttery-crisp flaky pain au chocolat, the fruit danish are the best.

He built a clean-burning wood oven for the bakery that uses local waste wood pressed into easy-to-store bricks.    

    This baker also constructed two large silos to store the wheat; he mills his own flour.

He discovered Red Fife wheat, a heritage variety with fine flavour and excellent baking qualities under threat of disappearing from Canada's rural landscape.

Through a Slow Food Canada initiative, Leir was encouraged to try using flour milled from it, and discovered it produced some of the best breads he had ever tried."Red Fife is very subtle, but definitely a much deeper, fuller wheat flavour."

I cannot describe this story better than Peter a very talented photographer who posted this blog.

Closet Chef

Being a Foodie, I am inspired and getting anxious to get back to my bread baking chez nous.

To give you a taste of Spring; here is a recipe you could make using a special baguette.

Pan Bagnat

Pan Bagnat is a sophisticated tuna salad served on a crusty baguette. They are very popular in Provence.

SERVES 2

1/4 cup thinly sliced onion

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 (6 ounce) can tuna in olive oil

fresh lemon juice

1 crusty baguette

lettuce leaves

8 tomato slices

6-8 hard-boiled eggs, slices

1/4 cup capers

4 anchovy fillets, drained

black olives, sliced

2 green onions, chopped

Directions

1. Combine onions with 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil,1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and several grinds of black pepper in a bowl.

2. Slowly mix everything together.

3. Work in undrained can of tuna in olive oil mixture, Season with fresh lemon juice, red-wine vinegar, and salt, then add pepper to taste.

4. Cut baguette in half lengthwise and again crosswise to have 4 pieces.

5. Spread each bottom half with lettuce leaves. Use a couple of varieties?whatever looks good?for the difference in texture.

6. On top of each lettuce layer, arrange 4 tomato slices.Then add about half the tuna mixture and 3 to 4 slices of hard-boiled egg.

7. Crisscross each sandwich with 2 drained anchovy fillets.

8. Top with olives, capers and chopped green onion.

9. Then drizzle generously with more olive oil and top with the remaining baguette half pressing gently but firmly,.

10. Wrap filled baguette in plastic wrap, and let stand at least for 20 minutes.

11. The longer it sit, the more the flavours will soak into the bread.

Tip:

2 kaiser rolls also works fine.

Tapenade can replace the black olives.

Print Recipe

 Thank you for your visit. See you next week.

Rita

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