Two ovens, one family, 39 years of crumbs.
It started with a bad croissant.
Henri Miette ate one on a train platform in 1986 and got so quietly furious that he quit his accounting job by Friday. He apprenticed for a year, borrowed his mother's savings, and opened a nine-square-metre shop with one deck oven and a starter he fed like a pet.
Thirty-nine years later his daughter Claire runs the bench. The shop is bigger. The starter is the same one — fed daily, holidays included, through two renovations and one flood.
We still refuse three things: mixes, margarine, and hurry.
House rules, non-negotiable.
Sell out, don't stock up
We bake what the day needs. Empty shelves at 4pm mean we did it right — nothing meets the bin.
Name every ingredient
Ask where anything comes from and whoever's at the counter can tell you the farm, the mill, the person.
Teach it forward
Two paid apprenticeships a year, always. Bread survives by being handed to someone younger.