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A Cannes Bakery Is Making the Case for Sourdough on the French Riviera

Paul Laplace’s Fournil Ephémère is winning over Cannes restaurants and locals with naturally fermented loaves built to outlast the expected daily baguette.

Last summer, my boyfriend made the kind of mistake that French locals avoid at all costs: he forgot to buy bread before the city shut down on Sunday afternoon.

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In the south of France, most shops are closed on Sundays and Mondays, so missing the window means going without bread until Tuesday—an unthinkable notion for any respectable French person. Hoping to find an outlier who happened to be open anyway, he scanned Google Maps and discovered a brand-new bakery just blocks away: Fournil Ephémère Cannes. The name literally translates to “pop-up bakery,” only adding to the boulangerie’s mysterious allure.

Alas, they weren’t open on Sundays, either, but we were still intrigued enough by the new arrival that we visited a few days later and discovered a fantastic spot helmed by Paul Laplace, a Cannes newcomer. Unlike most bakeries in sometimes-sleepy Cannes, where the focus is on traditional baguettes made with white flour and other sweet treats and viennoiserie, this one centers completely on sourdough bread made with a wide variety of grains and traditional flour blends. Sold in quarter, half or full loaves measured by weight rather than simply as boules, the bakery and the bread it sold seemed exceptionally modern. Sourdough is one of the oldest........

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