Montreal’s Best Bakery: Boulangerie Guillaume

Dear Guillaume,

We’ve never met. If we happened to be in the metro together I’d probably avoid your gaze like every other polite Montrealer is instinctively supposed to do, except I’d imagine you’re the kind of person who would look me in the eye and offer his seat when he saw how many groceries I was carrying, as I’m oft to do. The only change in my grocery-laden life is that now I’ll have less back pain because bread is lighter than watermelon, and all I want to buy is loaves and loaves of your slightly-fermented, baked delicacies.

So you don’t know me, but you’re already making my life better, whether or not you give up your metro seat. When summer ended I lost my baker. Well, really, he always belonged to LaPerle, but she was good about sharing. Bread-less, I resigned myself to making my own sourdough starter so I could have a little of the tangy flavour of LaPerle’s Boulanger’s bread all winter. I’m not a maternal person (I’m not even good with houseplants), so keeping fermenting flour alive in my house indefinitely would be a stretch.

So when I found you, the weight lifted from my shoulders. I saw the list of ingredients in all your breads so I didn’t even have to spend 10 minutes of my or your salesperson’s time asking what was in each loaf. No milk, no butter, no additives, and half the loaves used sourdough instead of yeast, most had poolish, and none of them used bleached flour. You had more than one spelt loaf, a kamut, and tons of integral (whole grain) loaves. Oh, Guillaume, it was wonderful. All those digestive enzymes in the doughy, thick baked strands of bread.

My favourite LaPerle loaf was a hazelnut sourdough, and when I saw your walnut loaf I knew I’d make it through winter in one piece. The walnuts, like LaPerle’s hazelnuts, were perfectly toasted. The second time I had this loaf from your bakery the nuts were softer, a little less intense, but the bread was sponge-y, light, and chewy. I don’t know if it’s better than LaPerle’s Boulanger’s, but I consider myself an equally lucky person, along with the rest of the Montreal population that should get to know your bread and your boulangerie.

Guillaume, have you ever heard of “Open That Bottle Day”? Two wine writers started it. The idea was that readers would plan a special occasion to open a bottle they’d been saving for whatever reason on a specific day. After the day passed, the writers received tons of letters from readers who had participated in the event with friends, family, or by themselves. The thing was, Guillaume, most of the readers’ letters weren’t about the taste of the wine itself, but about the experience of opening and drinking the bottle – the story of the bottle, the memories. Sometimes the wine wasn’t even very good, but it didn’t matter. The wine transported them back to a special moment when they bought it or received it – a trip, a graduation, a conversation, a celebration, or a memory of the family member whose bottle they had inherited from a long-hidden collection.

Your bread, for me, was like a bottle of wine. It brought me back to the summer’s sunshine, fresh local fruits and vegetables, and calm. It brought me back to the last farmers’ market of the season when the man from LaPerle’s Boulangerie said to me, “Thank you for coming back all summer,” as he looked straight into my eyes with a profound, sincere expression on his face. What do you say to someone who becomes such a part of your life’s routine? Maybe it’s silly. I barely knew this man, but maybe you, Guillaume, can understand how important this bread was, and how important yours will be.

Respectfully yours in friendship,
Amie

Boulangerie Guillaume
17 Fairmount East
Montreal, QC
Hours: Tues-Sat 7am-7pm, Sun 7am-2pm
514-507-3199