If I wanted to practice my passion incognito, if I wanted to mislead my staff (I don’t have a staff, by the way), if I wanted to deceive my beloved spouse, I would head for neither the Appalachian Trail nor Argentina. I would lose myself in the gustatory brothels of Brussels. Belgium chocolate is not the draw. It may be for others, but not for me. Belgian chocolate in the vastness of its selections is wonderful, but in this lust I am easily sated. I can’t taste it. I don’t have a sense of smell and thus am devoid of taste. (As soon as you finish with the obvious, timeworn, snide side comments, I’ll go on.) Sugar highs and lows quickly put limits on my desire to overdo. To the extent that I enjoy Belgian chocolate, it is because I feel it, not savor it. Hence, chocolate’s delights would not entice me away from the straight and narrow, from the iron rod. For me, the lady of the siren list is baked. Brussels has its bread. Brussels has its boulangeries. Again, I can’t taste their wares; but I can feel them in their infinite diversity.
The varieties available in Brussels’ boulangeries threaten to stretch the imagination’s elasticity beyond its limits of recoverability. Like many places in Europe, at least in the parts of Europe I’ve visited, such as Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, Belgium neighborhoods are laced together with “boulangeries,” offering breads and pastries to passersby and the loyal, daily shopper as well. They seem to be as ubiquitous here as are McDonalds and Pizza Hut beyond the western reaches of the Atlantic.
Some of these bread purveyors are but mere closets open to the sidewalk. Somehow, they are able to stock the favorite selections of folks in the immediate neighborhood and usually sell out their supply by the end of each day. And they have stunning selections of white, whole wheat, multi-grain rolls and loaves and pies and tarts. Other stores are of the walk-in variety, offering an array of ready to eat or take home pastries, and virtually countless combinations of all sorts of flour and additives for breads, rolls, buns, and in some cases, baked scraps from the dough leftover from a particular batch of bread. At the top of the bread store continuum are the shops offering all of the above but also a place, either inside or skirting the store on the sidewalk outside, to savor the pastry or bread of choice with a cup of coffee, cocoa, tea or maybe some wine. We eat ours on the way to meetings. Resistance goes only so far. You might even order a ready made or deftly prepared sandwich created from the many choices of sandwich-suitable samples.
The bakers delight in adding delectables such as cracked wheat, sun flower seeds, millet, walnuts, spelt, flax, rye, oats, barley, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, pine-nuts, almonds, yellow raisins, dark raisins, chocolate bits (dark and/or milk and/or white), dates, dried figs, chunks of other dried fruits or even corn. Some master bakers pride themselves in offering the finest, freshest, airiest, lightest batons. Others specialize in achieving bread density and weight rivaling lead or maybe uranium. To say that their breads are chewy is to say that lemon juice is sour, honey is sugary or the universe is large. Inadequate adjectives!! Chewy? What these breads are is intense, compressed, and challenging. A favorite saying is, “Every virtue at the testing point, takes the form of courage.” Patience, which takes the form of courage, is required for some of these breads. Like galactic black holes, these goods are small but extremely weighty. Eating them is a physical workout, complete with sweat, exhaustion and a sense of accomplishment. Buy two of the heaviest loaves and you will need help to carry them home. Remember Garrison Keillor’s cereal on Prairie Home Companion? It consisted of Oat Hulls and Wheat Chaff. It had such an immediate purgative effect, the consumer was advised to be near a relief facility when he was eating the stuff. The buyer needed recommendations from 3 trusted, experienced compatriots to vouch for her suitability before she could buy it. That is what some of these breads are like. I love to feel them starting through the system.
Most Brussels bakers express their creativity though new, untried flour combinations. They play with batches of dough. Dough is an art form. In addition to the diversity of flour types and additives, they create loaf designs, spanning the amorphous lump-to-artistic loaf continuum. There is the long thin baton, like a thick, stiff, straight, 3 foot snake. One of my favorite forms is from Paul, an upscale boulangerie situated conveniently on our route to Monday evening meetings. This entry is simply a kilogram plop of impenetrable dough, baked to deep brown, dense perfection. No two blobs are alike, except in weight, texture and pleasure. Then, there is the huge loaf resembling two end-to-end toasters. It is usually sliced so thin that individual pieces, held up to the sun, appear to be mere figments of imagined lace unable to filter out more than a few solar rays. Some offer square, puffy biscuits covered with pumpkin seeds or oats. Others sell baked objects shaped like eggs, but laced with millet and wheat kernels. Some wares are croissant-like, chocolate nibs bubbling from the surface. Others are like a large table napkin, rolled up and placed in a baked, bowed napkin holder. There are loaves resembling bricks of gold and weighing almost as much. There are huge oblong loaves posing as small, inland waterway, beached dolphins. (That may be an exaggeration. I’ll find out and get back to you.). One store we visited, a huge Smiths Marketplace sort of place, itself offered 12 different styles of batons, each unique it its length, color, consistency, additives, and cost. And that was just the batons.
In the end, I have the same problem. I can’t taste them. I can’t smell them. I can only feel them. But, they feel oh so good. These will keep me occupied for many months to come. I just hope to have some interstitial time sufficient for my ostensible purpose in being in Brussels. But enough of this. I drool. Et le boulangerie appele.
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