Left-Over Bread

My favourite experience of baking was actually in the Lot, although the process was typical of much bread-making in the south of France. Our neighbour Madame Malbec would make bread once a month or once a fortnight. The wood-fired oven, outside a crumbling house that her family had long since abandoned, had to be heated up a day ahead by her husband and son. Then she would arrive, black sprigged pinny in place and covered in flour, with her trusty barrowload of large, flat, cloth-lined baskets brimming with risen dough. The dough was transferred onto a large wooden paddle and shoved to the back of the heated oven. When it was cooked, she would stand in the road and, if you wanted her splendid bread, she sawed off a piece from one of the giant round, discus loaves and hung it on a hook to weigh it; this bread was delicious, substantial and chewy. The loaf lasted for at least a week, getting progressively harder to masticate. But it was never thrown away; what we might call ‘stale’ bread became an ingredient in cooking.