About Us

We are John and Jane Rose. Since 2016, we have spent half of each year in France, slowly cruising along the rivers and canals in our century-old Dutch barge, and the other half operating a micro bakery in a small village in eastern Australia.

When we bought our boat and started cruising the inland waterways of Europe, we didn’t know just how much we would be seduced by the foodways and culture of France.

We have been fortunate to discover more than just the restaurants and cafés, boulangeries and patisseries, providores and épiceries of Paris (though they, of course, are wonderful).

We have explored la France profonde, gliding from village to village, through farmlands and forests, meeting people and making friends who have introduced us to the distinct, diverse and seductive ways in which the French approach food and life.

We are not chefs, just a couple of country bakers, although we have cooked commercially in various settings, and we have been lucky enough to grow up with and maintain lifelong relationships with a close group of friends who are passionate and accomplished foodies and home cooks.

After leaving our corporate city lives behind many years ago, we operated a tour company and a farmstay property where we enjoyed preparing great food for discerning guests.

We also managed small cafés, before establishing our little bakery in 2015 when we found a property with a century-old wood oven in a picturesque country town. We also undertook intensive formal training at a wonderful school, the San Francisco Baking Institute.

Not long after restoring our old bakehouse and launching our little business, and much to our surprise and delight, we found a regular clientele among our neighbors for our wood-fired sourdough breads and French-inspired sweet treats and savory tarts.

You might think we would be content with such a life, but in 2016 we were inspired to buy an historic Dutch barge (built in 1916 and converted more recently as a live-aboard) and to cruise her from her mooring in Belgium, south into the inland waterways of France.

From that moment we have been able to alternate between European summers on board our boat, cruising and exploring, while continuing in the southern summers to bake delicious foods for our loyal customers in Australia.

About the blog

We strongly believe that French attitudes to ingredients, seasonality, provenance and food-raising contain clues to how we can grow, distribute, purchase, prepare and consume our foods in a better, more sustainable and more thoroughly enjoyable way than is often the case these days.

In a world where food is sometimes characterized as physical or ecological “poison”, or as an ideological barrier between people, or as something delivered from a faraway factory (or laboratory!) to our unset tables, we want to explore and capture some of the French love of food as personal pleasure and social engagement.

We want to write about how French cuisine became what it is and what it has become famous for – its history, the people behind its development, the ways in which it has become an integral part of the French national persona and how it has spread its influence around the world.

We want to take a look at how the French grow their food and the significance they attach to the quality and qualities of ingredients.

We want to look at how the French developed the whole notion of the “restaurant”and its many variants, and how they continue to make eating out and eating together such an important part of everyday life.

And we want to encourage ourselves and our readers to consider how we can bring joy to our own lives by incorporating a little of the French approach to cooking and eating, not as a strict regime or an all-or-nothing proposition, but as a complement to and refreshment of our existing food practices.

Richard Olney, a famous American writer, painter, cook and host, who spent most of his adult life in France, especially in Provence, wrote in Simple French Food in 1974:

“without rules, improvisation is impossible – and that is what cooking is all about … the better one understands and is able to define an intricate framework of limitations – the greater is the freedom lent one’s creative imagination.”

We want to explore some of those “rules”about food and cooking, as devised by the French over the last 300 years or so, embodied in techniques, philosophies, classifications, professional practices and traditions, because they offer fascinating insights in themselves, but also because we agree with Olney that they can provide the confidence and the foundations for relaxed, enjoyable approaches, in our own kitchens and at our own dining tables, towards the ultimate aim of cuisine Française – which is the pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of each others’ company.