Just desserts

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This article was published 15/12/2018 (1951 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The holidays are a time for indulging in baked goods and sweet treats.

For many, that means old standbys such as shortbreads and snickerdoodles or prairie staples such as butter tarts and matrimonial cake.

Which is a way of saying traditional Christmas baking can sometimes get a bit predictable.

For those who want to incorporate something a little bit different into their festive feasting, there are many local bakeries run by those who have brought their craft to Winnipeg from other parts of the world, offering epicurean delights from their respective countries and cultures.

One of them is A l’Epi de Ble, an authentic French patisserie at Main Street and Hartford Avenue.

Owned by Nathalie Gautier and her husband, Gilles, the French couple’s bakery has become a fixture for beautiful breads and decadent desserts.

The most traditional and popular dessert enjoyed in France at Christmas are bûche de Noël, known in English as Yule logs.

The elaborate, stunning desserts are typically made of a genoise sponge with buttercream inside, rolled to form a cylinder.

“That, I would say, we were doing in the ’70s,” Nathalie says. The bûche de Noël she makes are quite a bit more modern.

“The old one, you can have it, but if you have a big meal for Christmas, you need something very light,” Nathalie says. Of the four varieties offered this year, three are lighter takes containing mousses and coulis.

Nathalie estimates she will make 200 bûche de Noel desserts this season and 400 of the smaller “buchettes,” which come in Grand Marnier, chocolate ganache, and coffee flavours.

“For me, it’s difficult to stay very traditional,” Nathalie says of making bûche de Noël, adding Christmas is the time to create something special and new.

Nathalie is a certified pastry chef, but Gilles is in charge of all the breads, including croissants.

“In France, you have the job of pastry chef, and you have the job of baker. Here, they mix everything… in France, you have to choose. Either you are a baker with bread, or you are a pastry maker,” Nathalie says.

“He is, I would say, the master in the flaky dough.”

Dough-based Noel noshes include sourdough with fig, and flax bread with cranberry and walnut. They’re in high demand, as are the croissants.

“On the 25th, when they share the breakfast, of course they want some croissants,” Nathalie says of her customers, estimating she’ll sell 100 on Christmas Eve alone. Varieties include plain, almond crème croissants and chocolate.

Gilles is also the master of macarons — innately Instagrammable, but notoriously difficult to make meringue confections filled with ganache or buttercream.

The colourful sandwich cookies come in flavours such as pistachio, gingerbread, and cherry and fly out the door year round, Nathalie says, but especially during the holidays.

Nathalie’s joie de vivre is evident within moments of meeting her. Her broad smile, ready laugh, and bubbliness bring more warmth to the space than an oven ever could.

She stopped several times during the interview to banter with customers: sometimes in French, sometimes in English, and sometimes in a mélange of the two.

Nathalie and Gilles came from France in 2011 and opened A l’Epi de Ble the same year. They don’t have any family in Winnipeg, so Nathalie considers her customers family.

“I try to remember all the names of my customers. I try to remember a little bit of their habits. When I started here… people were telling me, ‘It’s funny you’re calling me by my name, because I go into some stores for like 10 years, 20 years, and they don’t even know my name.’”

She didn’t miss a single name throughout the interview.

“It is the best pastry you’ll ever taste in Winnipeg,” customer Paula Biluk says. “The friendliness here is about as good as her (Nathalie’s) laugh.”

“Every morning, when I take care of my customers, I don’t think about my time, I don’t think about my problems, because I have problems, too, you know,” Nathalie says. “I’m just like you. But everything is out. Poof!”

Baking is Nathalie’s way of spreading joy, especially during the holidays. That keeps her going through grueling days that can start as early as 3 a.m. and end at 9 p.m. Nathalie’s attachment to her customers motivates her to make sure everything is perfect.

“You can’t make any mistakes,” she says. “They count on you. They receive family. That is a big challenge. No mistakes. Everything must be more than just OK.”

While a drive from Paris to the east German city of Dresden would take about 11 hours, a trip from A l’Epi de Ble to the Crusty Bun Bakery & Café only takes about half an hour. Owned by German ex-pats Andi Ingenfeld and Frieda Brandt, the Crusty Bun specializes in European-style breads and baked goods.

One traditional German yuletide treat is stollen — a dense, sweet, rum-infused bread chock full of raisins, almonds, orange and lemon peel, and dusted with confectioners sugar. A ribbon of marzipan runs through the middle of the bread to make it extra decadent.

“The marzipan in the middle is referred to as ‘Jesus in a blanket,’” Brandt says.

The zesty bread is enjoyed by Germans throughout the Advent season.

“In Germany, a big thing are the Christmas markets,” Brandt says. “In the city centres, there will be booths set up, and there’s lots of food and mild wine, and you would definitely get stollen there.”

Stollen is so ubiquitous in Germany, there’s even a festival dedicated to it. Stollenfest takes place annually in Dresden, always on the Saturday before the second Sunday of Advent.

Among Stollenfest’s festivities is the baking and slicing of a giant, three-to-four tonne stollen.

While the Crusty Bun doesn’t make any that large, they do make a large number. Demand is high because people often give stollen as gifts.

Between the bakery’s two locations — their first on St. Mary’s Road opened in 2009, the second last August on Headmaster Row — they make around 1,400 loaves of stollen each Christmas, Ingenfeld and Brandt estimate.

Roughly 1,000 will be of the traditional variety, with the other 400 being two variations: one featuring a not-too-sweet hazelnut paste that’s spread on top of the dough before it’s rolled to create a perfect spiral, and the other featuring poppy seeds.

“Like here,” Ingenfeld says, gesturing to the traditional stollen on a sampler plate a reporter munched from throughout the interview. “We have lots of fruits and rum. Lots of the young people don’t like it anymore.”

German Christmas nibbles abound as well. Small bites include spritzgeback, a piped, chocolate-dipped swirl cookie; vanillekipferl, a crescent-shaped, sugar-topped shortbread; and spekulatius, a crunchy biscuit liberally spiced with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger and clove.

Spekulatius biscuits are punched into elaborate shapes such as windmills and elephants by a hand-operated machine the couple brought from Germany.

The Crusty Bun has treats for when the calendar turns, too. Jambusters, for example, are popular at New Year’s. At the Crusty Bun, they’re offered year-round.

“It’s a tradition that on New Year’s at 12 (noon,) they serve jambusters,” Ingenfeld says.

“New Year’s Eve and Day,” Brandt adds. “Usually New Year’s Eve, they say you need something fatty for all the alcohol that’s to follow.”

“There’s one fun tradition, though, on New Year’s Eve,” Brandt says. “When you get the jambusters, there’s a game where one will be filled with mustard. Whoever bites into that one will have a lucky year despite the pain.”

They have no plans to add mustardbusters to their offerings.