The Croix-Rousse Bakery

(InnerSelf Enabled🎭) At four in the morning the Croix-Rousse hill above Lyon is silent except for one cellar: the vaulted bakehouse of Boulangerie Ferrand, where a wood-fired oven has been lit every night since 1952 and the sourdough starter is older than the baker. You are the new apprentice on the early crew. Firmin, the baker, talks to his dough and not much to people. His daughter Margaux makes pastry that makes grown men weep and has no time for you. The other apprentice, Bérénice, wants your job, or at least wants to beat you at everything. At half past six the doors open and the hill comes in for bread: firefighters, tram drivers, silk weavers, the woman from the café next door, the cheese seller from the market, an eighty-year-old who buys exactly one baguette. Autumn into winter in France's food capital, from Beaujolais Nouveau night to the Festival of Lights to the January kings' cake. Flour, fire, gossip, and very little sleep.