Privately, I conduct an ongoing Best Bread Contest. For a while the Bétaille bakery headed the list. Its pain de campagne is a slightly domed loaf with a crisp crust that shatters when you slice into it and a dense interior. Then I advanced a bakery in St-Céré into first place, when, one noon, I picked up half of a fat saucer of warm pain de campagne. It had a moist yeastiness that Bétaille’s lacked. Though it was somewhat beyond the realm of my survey, on a trip to the neighboring département of the Dordogne in the early spring of 1987, I went out of my way to visit the village of Meyrals, having read some travel piece claiming its bakery had “the best bread in the region.” I was the first through the door when the tiny boulangerie opened—a cold, gray, foggy morning that called out for a comforting café au lait. I chose a pain de campagne the size of an automobile tire’s hub, stashed it in the backseat, and set off for Pech Farguet. On the way back, reason set in—I’d bought more than I could possibly eat before it went stale.
