Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf Book

In the spirit of A Year in Provence comes the romantic tale of a woman, a baker, and their loaf

“[T]he printed page alone will evoke the crackling noises and the toasty aroma of cooling loaves in Jean-Claude Choquet’s boulangerie.” —William Castle, The Boston Globe

Overcome by a passion for French bread, Sara Mansfield Taber travels to Brittany in search of a loaf that, like the lifestyle which must surely accompany it, is perfect in its simplicity. After many months of seeking, she tears off a hunk of pain trois rivicres made by Gold Medal Baker Monsieur Jean-Claude Choquet of Blain, Loire-Atlantique. It “smelled like heaven and tasted a mile deep.” It tasted honest. Here was her loaf.

A deliciously satisfying mixture of history, science, travel narrative, and romance (could anything be more powerful than bread love?), Bread of Three Rivers reminds us that nothing, no matter how basic, is as simple as it would seem.

“Bread of Three Rivers . . . is a work dripping with charm and more importantly is a homage to artisan French baking and the culture that sustains it.” —Sophie Herron, Slow Food

Sara Mansfield Taber has taught at the University of Minnesota and the graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins University. In 1996 she earned a William B. Sloane Fellowship in Nonfiction to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. She lives in France and Washington, D.C.

Booklist - Mark Knoblauch

Nothing epitomizes the French lifestyle more than a loaf of bread fresh from the local bakery. How can something so distinctive be made from only flour, water, salt, and yeast? Taber assesses the state of contemporary French bread by visiting an artisanal bakery and some producers of those four ingredients. She spends days at a celebrated Breton boulangerie, uncovering the traditions and techniques of producing an incomparable, crusty loaf. She proceeds to the miller of the bakery's flour and, to her surprise, discovers that much of the wheat comes from the U.S. She visits the pumping station that supplies the bakery with water from the local aquifer. She tours the factory that grows the high-quality yeasts used by the bakery. Her most extensive investigations occur where generations of workers employ elaborate series of sluices and ponds to extract the finest salts from seawater. The ingredients and the baking of French bread are threatened by technological advances and the nascent world economy, whose effects on the foundation of the French diet may be profound.