‘Fête du Pain’ in La Gurraz
A short hike away on the other side of the valley from Sainte-Foy, nestled under Mont Pourri, is the charming alpine village of La Gurraz. To get there, drive or hike down to the Isère river, which as you might guess, flows out of Val d’Isère, cross the bridge and follow the signs to La Gurraz.
At the heart of the village is a 19th century communal bread oven, a veritable slice of mountain history. With a three metre internal diameter, warming up the oven to cooking temperature is a morning’s work in itself, so it’s no wonder that they make an event out of bread making. To fill the oven, one hundred and fifty 1kg loaves are cooked at the same time, which brings a whole new meaning to batch baking!
The baking team follow an old traditional recipe to make this Gurraz version of sourdough bread, but with a secret ingredient. Living at 1605m above sea level, growing wheat for bread making has never been easy. So in a clever adaptation to high-altitude conditions, these industrious bakers use 30% potato in their recipe. The potato is precooked and added to the dough cold.
This traditional preparation of the dough using natural yeast takes several days, and given the quantities, requires some hard work too.
The day starts early for a baker and at 4am, the sourdough starter is added to the dough mix, the ‘mise en levain’. The natural yeasts are given time to do their work and at 8am the ‘pétrissage’, kneeding, commences. Two hours later at 10am, they start ‘façonnage‘, shaping the dough into rustic 1kg loaves. Yes, the potato in the recipe does make the bread heavier, but the result is super tasty and I really don’t why this isn’t more widespread.
Whilst all this is going on, another team is preparing the oven. A fire is lit inside the oven using large planks of wood, and is moved around to ensure a good even 400˚ heat. Once up to temperature, any embers are removed and they can start loading the oven, which you can see them doing here on this video using a long wooden paddle to slide the loaves into place. Note the way he scores the loaf with his Opinel knife. (Every Savoyard has one of these!)
Cooking time is over an hour, so plenty of time to enjoy a stroll around the village, admire the glaciers above you and grab yourself some lunch, which today is paella followed by apricot tart. There’s a bar and some seating under a small marquee which makes for a lovely friendly atmosphere and a lot of happy locals.
The bread is checked, moved around, checked again, and when ready they begin the ‘défournement’, removing the bread from the oven. This is no mean task when you have 150 loaves to get out of a very large, very hot oven! This is how it’s done. Note how each loaf is tapped to check its ‘cuisson’, that it’s done.
Here, beer in hand, (it’s thirsty work), the head baker admires his work and counts the loaves.
Removing all the loaves takes over half an hour, so some get slightly crispier than others!
This traditional wood fire oven method of cooking bread produces a thick crunchy crust which helps protect the bread inside and it will keep for months. In the old days, the bread would be stored for months at a time, although I am told that towards the end, they used to smash it open rather that saw it into slices, and then they would put it into soups. It really is very tasty, and my loaves won’t last that long!
La Gurraz’s bread festival is an unforgettable taste of Savoyard heritage.
Read other articles about Sainte Foy on the Time to Ski blog page
