For a few days now, this quiet little village in Puy-de-Dôme has been filled with unusual excitement. The oven is being prepared for the annual bread festival.
No one knows when the Montaigut-le-Blanc bread oven was built.
It is a solid stone building covered with heavy slates, with a particularly large front room.
Abandoned for 100 years, it was magnificently restored from 2003 to 2004 and held its first festival in 2005.
And here we go again.
For an entire year, logs of wood were patiently collected.
10 days before the festival, the heating begins. A dozen people take turns every 4 hours to slowly bring the oven up to temperature.
It must accumulate enough heat.
The ashes are then scraped to clean the base before putting it in the oven.
In the meantime, the baker from Chidrac, a neighboring village, has prepared the dough.
We will also bake the « pompe » with apples, a puff pastry filled with compote with small pieces, a delicious Auvergne pastry made here according to « La Bible de Claudette », a secret Montacut recipe.
130 kg of Canada apples were purchased, which the villagers peeled in good spirits, each one having come with their peeler and their enthusiasm.
November 19. The big day has arrived!
Three batches of bread are started, then three more.
The improvised baker, equipped with a long shovel, quickly puts the dough balls in the oven, carefully arranging them on the terracotta base.
After half an hour of baking, the balls of bread are taken out and sold while still hot.
The entire village and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages flocked to the oven for these two days of celebration.
Breads and pumps go … like hot cakes.
The recipe will be good for Mons Acutus, the heritage association of the commune of Montaigut-le-Blanc.
It has already restored, among other things and in partnership with the town hall, the walnut oil mill, located below on the banks of the Couze Chambon, the small river that flows in the valley.
Other projects will be able to be financed.
For two days, the oven becomes again the place of conviviality that it once was.
The children of the school were even invited to discover it and to shape each their bread before taking a guided historical tour of the village with the mayor.
Montaigut-le-Blanc … by the way, why « white »?
It is said that, in the past, the village was proud of many mills that produced a beautiful white flour … but that would be a legend.
In this year 2024, once again, we have renewed traditions and strengthened the bonds of friendship between neighbors.
©2024 – IMPACT EUROPEAN
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