Taste of Travel: Paris : Combing the patisseries for the lightest, most buttery of the famed French breakfast food

On the first day of my first visit to Paris 25 years ago, I had two urgent mandates: one, to find temporary quarters in a girls’ dormitory near the Faubourg-St-Honore and two, to buy my first true French croissant. After the first order of business was accomplished with relatively little hassle (my student I.D. and papers showing I had a summer job just up the rue were all in order), I left my luggage in my new quarters, ignored my jet lag and set out to find a patisserie. If this was Paris, and I was really here, I had to have a croissant, more of an icon to me than the Eiffel Tower.

Within minutes I was inside a tiny, belle epoque patisserie- boulangerie, overwhelmed by the seductive aromas and the amazing array of pastries and breads produced by just one small shop. I ended up toting brioches, slices of quiche Lorraine, millefeuilles, saucisson en croutes and tartelettes aux fraises, in addition to the requisite croissants, back to my little dormitory room, where I feasted in lonely splendor for two days.

Despite countless visits to Paris since, and vast exposure to the culinary riches of France, the croissant remains my touchstone. I arrive, I check in, I eat a croissant. Now I’m in France.

I am hardly alone in my affection for this golden, flaky, meltingly sensuous crescent roll. In Paris, where legions of fickle culinary connoisseurs pass judgment daily on the creations of some of the world’s top chefs and bakers, there has been surprising loyalty for over a century to this simple, traditional fare. Beyond time and beyond trends, the classic croissant remains ubiquitous in every pastry shop from Dieppe to Marseille. Yet, as easy as it is to find a croissant, it is a much greater challenge to find a great croissant, as I discovered over the last couple of years while researching a cookbook on Paris bakers.

In my quest to target the best of the best Paris bakers (don’t hate me . . . it is work), I sampled the wares of more than 100 bakers in every one of the city’s 20 arrondissements. While many patissiers and boulangers (one trained primarily in pastry making, the other in breads) have their own specialties, my subjective sampling revealed that only perhaps one in 10 makes a truly superb croissant. For me, this means a croissant that is glowingly fresh, with a burnished exterior as fragile as a quail’s egg, a thousand delicate, flaky layers within, rich with butter and eggs and yet still, somehow, lighter than air.

A bad croissant, for me, is any that is not all of the above. Made with heavy hands, or impatience, cheap butter or even commercially processed dough, croissants can be leaden, too dense, doughy and undercooked or simply papery and tasteless even though they may look great. Also undesirable in my view are the croissants pauvre (poor croissants), as one baker described them, made with margarine or vastly reduced butter and meant to be more “dietetic.” They’re OK, a little more cake-like, a little less flaky, but I always feel a tremendous need to spread them with butter, thus defeating their purpose. In some bakeries you will see two types of croissants displayed: croissants and croissants au beurre-- croissants made with their full complement of butter. Go for the au beurre every time.

One of the surprises that my research uncovered was that the croissant and its close relative, the brioche, two of the traditional components of the classic French breakfast are not, in fact, French at all, but Viennese. They were introduced to France only in the mid-19th Century, when a group of Viennese bakers migrated to Paris and opened a handful of Austrian-style bake shops, where they offered sweet breads made with butter, sugar and milk, as well as croissants, brioches and pains aux raisins, raisin buns created from brioche dough. The invention of the croissant itself is generally attributed to a group of 17th-Century bakers in Vienna who were instrumental in repelling an invasion of Turks in 1683. The bakers, wide awake and working in the middle of the night, heard enemy forces burrowing a tunnel under Vienna’s ramparts and sounded the alarm. To celebrate the defeat of the Turks, the bakers created a pastry using the crescent from the Turkish flag as a motif.

During his first visit to Paris in the early 1950s my father wrote home that “the croissants taste like they were made by angels.” When they are as good as they can be, meticulously prepared out of the finest ingredients, croissants are certainly angelic fare. And the bakers who produce them are indeed the seraphim in the firmament of Paris baking. For those who would like to savor some of the world’s best croissants during their next visit to Paris, I offer a quartet of divine sources with a gentle caveat emptor: The panoply of tantalizing goods displayed in the patisseries and boulangeries make it extraordinarily difficult to limit yourself to just a croissant. I never could.

Beyond the raspberry-pink facade of his tiny, turn-of-the-century patisserie- boulangerie in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, Jean-Luc Poujauran turns out some of the finest croissants in Paris. Among Poujauran’s most ardent fans is Francois Mitterrand, the president of France, to whom the baker personally delivers a fresh batch every morning. The diminutive size and intimate ambience of this winsome shop on the narrow Rue Jean-Nicot belie the vast scope of this world-class baker’s enterprise. The shaggy-haired, 40-year-old Jean-Luc furnishes croissants and a variety of other baked goods to a string of hotels, including the luxurious Crillon, and to more than 60 restaurants in Paris and the surrounding suburbs. The son of a baker in the Landes region of southwest France, Poujauran offers several regional specialties learned at his father’s knee: a gateau Basque, a delightfully rich golden cake filled with almond cream; sables a l’orange et raisins, flaky orange and raisin cookies; tartes aux pignons, pine nut and almond tartlets, and a very tasty pain au mais, a small loaf of corn bread that combines corn meal and whole corn kernels, and which many of Poujauran’s clientele buy to accompany their foie gras. Also of note are the dense and crusty country breads, such as the chewy, flavorful baguette and the pain de seigle aux raisins, an intense, dark rye loaf with raisins. On one trip home from Paris I carried back seven loaves of Poujauran’s breads and, despite being encased in four layers of wrapping, their mouth-watering odor still permeated the plane’s cabin.

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While Mitterrand is enjoying Poujauran croissants, members of the French Senate are munching on the equally delicious croissants of Gerard Mulot, whose dazzling modern emporium on the Rue de Seine is just steps away from the Senat, which is lodged in Luxembourg Palace. It is not unusual at certain hours of the morning and afternoon to see a mannerly line of locals from this quartier Latin neighborhood queuing out beyond Mulot’s glass door; neither is it unusual to see, among the patient throng, Marcello Mastroianni, who lives nearby. Mulot, born into a modest farming family in Alsace-Lorraine, worked as a baker’s apprentice in a small village in the Vosges mountains until he set his sights on the capital. He came to Paris at age 18 and worked in a variety of small shops, “perfecting my patisserie,” he says, until he was able to open his own bakery in 1975.

Mulot’s spare, pristine, mostly white decor sets off his pastries like jewels. An inventive and artistic patissier, Mulot uses lots of brilliantly colored fruits bought fresh every morning at the Rungis wholesale markets outside Paris. His dessert tarts, adorned with raspberries, kiwis, strawberries, apricots, rounds of orange, golden plums and tiny petals of lemon flesh, are so vibrant they seem to emanate light. His savory tarts, such as the deep-dish salmon quiche with spinach, mushrooms, chunks of tomato and sprigs of dill, are also as tempting as they are bright and beautiful.

In addition to his plump, buttery croissants and wonderful tarts, Mulot prepares unusual and irresistible brioches aux gouttes de chocolat-- chocolate-chip brioche sticks, an after-school favorite of local children--and stunning, pastel-hued macarons : delicate macaroons, variously flavored with chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, coffee and vanilla. I sampled my first Mulot macaron --a vanilla one--in the spring of 1972, and the sensory memory of biting into that fragile combination of egg white, powdered almonds and sugar, through the barely resistant shell down into the butter cream interior, remains with me, intensely, to this day.

On the Ile St-Louis, in a shop so small that three people constitute a crowd, Marcel Haupois has been turning out big, airy croissants, as well as rustic country breads and some signature pastries, for more than 35 years. Among his faithful patrons are iliens (residents of the Ile) Georges Moustaki, Baron and Baroness Elie de Rothschild and, for many years, the late Marc Chagall, who bought his paints in a shop across the street. While the energetic, bespectacled Monsieur Haupois toils from the pre-dawn hours until after dusk in his large kitchens behind the shop (with time off in the early afternoon for a nap), the vigilant and somewhat dour Madame Haupois oversees the front of the shop. All morning long the Haupois croissants come out of the oven, rest briefly on a cooling rack, then make their appearance out front where they are snapped up like, well, hot cakes. The seductive odors wafting out the door lure passersby along the Rue des Deux Ponts, whether or not they had any intention of buying a midmorning treat.

Also tempting strollers on the Ile St-Louis are Haupois’ special gougeres, giant round Gruyere cheese puffs that are Gallic cousins to the popover, and his unique Croquets Bourbonnais, crisp, flat, paper-thin nougat cookies named for the nearby Quai de Bourbon. If you’re exploring this little village-in-the-Seine--the string of shops along the Rue St-Louis-en-Ile, the broad quays overlooking the river, and the many 17th-Century landmark buildings--stop in at the Boulangerie Haupois for sustenance and a taste of the ile . And don’t forget to look up--while most of the decor chez Haupois could not be humbler, the antique painted ceiling is a gem.

One of the most elegant and civilized spots for enjoying a fine croissant is Laduree, the ornate tearoom-patisserie in the fashionable heart of town just minutes from the Madeleine. An enchanting time capsule of turn-of-the-century Paris, Laduree, which opened its doors in 1863, is embellished with paneled walls, gilded moldings, black marble-topped tables and lavish murals of cherubs cavorting on rose-hued clouds. I never feel more Parisian than when I am ensconced in this supremely romantic room, sipping on a cafe au lait , nibbling on some carefully chosen indulgence and watching the world go silently by on the Rue Royale.

Waitresses in prim, white-ruffled aprons serve the beautifully crafted wares of chef- patissier and owner Jean-Marie Desfontaines to a well-heeled crowd of regulars. There are croissants and brioches in the morning; tea sandwiches, light luncheon fare and patisseries throughout the afternoon. Desfontaines, a demanding and vigilant proprietor, inherited his business and his calling from his father, who acquired the venerable Laduree in 1943. His products, as he describes them, are in the grande classique style and include some of the most beloved items in the repertory of French patisserie: lemony madeleines, the tea cakes of Proustian fame; celestial macarons in a variety of hues and flavors but particularly luscious in chocolate; carres aux framboises, a puff-pastry “sandwich” filled with raspberry jam; and a cake aux fruits, a light, buttery poundcake laced with kirsch and studded with candied fruits.

The patrons who crowd the little tables from lunchtime on are as immutable as Laduree’s setting: chic ladies in chignons and perfectly tailored suits taking a break from the rigors of shopping on the nearby Rue du Faubourg-St. Honore; tweedy older couples in for a day in the city; one or two somberly clad, lonely looking women in their 50s--retired governesses, perhaps--extending three tea sandwiches into a two-hour lunch; and always a couple of tables of soignee mother-and-daughter duos.

Laduree has had remarkable staying power, unusual even in this city with more respect for its patrimony than most others. Flourishing in the days of Proust, Sarah Bernhardt and Colette, Laduree continues on as a gracious reminder of another era as the year 2000 approaches.

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GUIDEBOOK

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Boulangerie Haupois, 35 Rue des Deux-Ponts, Paris 4e (Ile St-Louis); local telephone 43-54-57-59.

Gerard Mulot, 76 Rue de Seine, Paris 6e; tel. 43-26-85-77.

Jean-Luc Poujauran, 20 Rue Jean-Nicot, Paris 7e; tel. 47-05-80-88.

Laduree, 16 Rue Royale, Paris 8e; tel. 42-60-21-79.

Other recommended bakeries:

Au Flute Gana, 226 Rue des Pyrenees, Paris 20e; tel. 43-58-42-62.

Au Panetier, 10 Place des Petits-Peres, Paris 2e; tel. 42-60-90-23.

Patisserie Millet, 103 Rue Saint-Dominique, Paris 7e; tel. 45-51-49-80.

Patisserie Pottier, 4 Rue de Rivoli, Paris 4e; tel. 48-87-87-16.

Patisserie Peltier, 66 Rue de Sevres, Paris 7e; tel. 47-34-06-62.