tips for baking in France...

...and perhaps also tips for shopping for ingredients in France as well. It took me some time to figure out where the items I needed were stocked in our local grocery store as well as what the heck they were called. Now that I have figured out the local Migros (pronounce mee-grow) I am loath to venture into other stores for my groceries. It's not too bad going into another French store, but drive across the border into Switzerland and you are back to square-one. Not only are things shelved in different areas, but they are called different things. Yes, it's still in French (and often German and Italian as well) but they have not only different name brands, but different names entirely! One example that I think is actually pretty funny is that milk, lait (lay) in French, is called Drink in Switzerland! I don't know why but I find that so very amusing.

So, on to ingredients for baking. The standard ingredients you have to look for when baking are the following: sugar, flour, butter, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, cocoa powder...I'm sure I'm missing something....yeast if you're baking bread. Those are the standards, right? Well, I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in the U.S. all those items are pretty much in one aisle -the baking aisle. Here that is not the case. Yes, the flour, sugar, vanilla and baking powder are in the "baking" section. But the cocoa powder is in the aisle with coffee, tea, and hot chocolate mix! This seems very strange to me. Perhaps you can make hot cocoa with baking cocoa but why bother when there is shelf after shelf of powder chocolate designed specifically to throw into hot milk instantly making hot chocolate? Once you discover that this is where the baking cocoa is your job is not over. You still have to pay careful attention to which canister of cocoa you are getting. Note the picture to the left. These two canisters look almost identical, don't they? Yes. OK, except that they have different pictures of baked goods on them - but they are pictures of baked goods. Not chocolate milk or something. So, naturally knowing what the cocoa canister looked like I just grabbed one during a quick shopping trip. Only to discover that there was indeed a key difference between this canister and the one I usually bought for baking. Look at the following pictures and see if you notice the difference.
Ah , yes. If you said the difference is one says cacao en poudre and one says chocolat en poudre, you would be correct. Now you may be asking yourself, "what is the difference?" The difference is quite obvious when you open the containers and see that one is the dark, rich, unsweetened cocoa (or cacao) used in baking and the other is a light, sugary powder which looks like a more granular form of Swiss Miss hot chocolate (which as far as I can tell they do NOT sell in Switzerland or France -Swiss Miss , my ass). In my defense the containers do look almost exactly the same and if you read the instructions on the chocolat en poudre it claims it too is for baking. there is a recipe for some sort of mousse that I'm going to have to try one of these days, but it certainly is not what I want to throw into my chocolate snack cake!

Next we come to the baking powder. It is found in the baking section but if you don't know what your looking for it can take you hours to track it down. First off, it is called levure chimique or I have also heard it referred to as levure anglaise. This is sort of funny because levure is French for yeast, anglaise is English and chimique is chemical. So their baking powder is called chemical yeast or English yeast. I guess it sort of makes sense since baking powder is the agent which helps baked goods rise. I just think it's funny because, apparently, the French didn't need this component in their baking till the English came along and started settling down in France. I only was able to discover the what baking powder was called and how to find it thanks to a dear friend who visited us the second month we were living here. She was a French major in college and had no qualms tracking down an elusive store employee and making them tell her where these essential ingredients were - it was also thanks to her we discovered where the baking soda was kept. The store employee who assisted her immediately made the assumption that she was British, why else would she have any need for levure anglaise? I really need to find out what the French use to make baked goods. Then again, they don't seem to be a huge cookie country, you know? They're much more into their pastries and fruit tarts. Whew, now we know what baking powder is called -but the tricky thing, for an American at least, is how it is packaged. I kept scanning the shelves for a canister or at the very least a box of baking powder. Oh no, not in France. Here your baking powder comes in little packets. There are 4 packets to a package.

Luckily, baking soda is called bicarbonate, which makes sense. It is even in a box very similar to our very own Arm and Hammer boxes back in the States, only it's not bright orange, but blue and white. The difficulty for me was that it was not in the baking section. It was near the spices and salt. Once again it is only thanks to our friend that we found it at all. It's amazing how ingrained certain things become to you. Why on earth should I be scanning the shelves of a French market for an orange box with an arm holding a hammer on it? It's ridiculous, but that's what I found myself doing. Stupid American, I know. But I've gotten over it now.

Hmm...I think that's all I got for the moment. I need to go whip up the brownie mix that was sent to us in our Christmas care packages. If you are wondering, yes you can indeed buy mixes for cakes and brownies here in France but they cost a fortune. I'm not kidding. In the States you can get a box mix for what? .99 cents? Here is costs 6 - 8 Euros! With the current exchange rate ( don't get me started no that) it works out to be about $9 - $12! I love me some Duncan Hines brownies but not enough to shell out 10 bucks for them!!! I'll make my own thank you very much...assuming I manage to buy the right canister of cocoa powder, that is.