Three Ingredients (working title) By Emily Esterson
Augustin Fortier has magic in his hands. His baguettes taste of love and effort, with an open crumb and crackly crust. Gifted with the “mother” that has been passed down in his family for centuries and the ambition of youth, Augustin is a shoe-in to win the Prix de Baguette. The key to his win? The “mother,” and wheat grown by his farmer friend, Lynette. One summer afternoon, Augustin finds the bakery’s basement door ajar, the lock cut. The “mother,” and his grandmother’s journals of formulas, are gone.
Simon DeNotre, the distant cousin who owns the Paris bakery, thwarts Augustin’s ambition at every turn, forcing him to sell pre-made commercial bread, turning off the ovens, sabotaging Augustin’s efforts to return DeNotre’s into what it had been when his grandmother baked there just after the war—one of the best bakeries in Paris. Was it DeNotre who stole the Mother? Or was it the woman in the yellow raincoat who passes by every day, looks in the window, and sometimes stands across the street just watching?
A combination of Chocolat by Joanne Harris, and Jenny Colgan’s Little Beach Street Bakery, Three Ingredients is about the curse of ambition, the mystery of family, and the magic of bread. The author is a professional writer/editor, holds an MFA in nonfiction, and teaches journalism at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School. She spent two years in France, is an avid baker, and attended the San Francisco Baking Institute.
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