The American Boulangerie, a cookbook for home bakers
French-American restaurateur Pascal Rigo’s cookbook has recipes for bread, pastries, tarts and more
Pascal Rigo’s early years in a little village near Bordeaux, France, sound idyllic from a food-lover’s perspective, although parts of it might break a few child labour laws nowadays.
“By the time I was eleven, I had been allowed to cut my first loaf of bread ... In my mid-teens, M. Audouin sold his bakery and I got a job in the next town over ... Well, I shouldn’t really say ‘job’ because I was paid in bread, croissants, and an occasional kick in the butt.”
After university and then earning the baking certificat d’aptitude professionnelle – which is required to open a bakery in France – Rigo writes that the economic situation in his country in the 1980s led him to try his luck in the United States, first in Los Angeles, then in San Francisco. He opened Bay Bread, bought a flour mill and opened a boulangerie, which was an immediate success.