Since 1987,
the same
starter.
Our story
A small bakehouse in Lavapiés, a jar of sourdough fed twice a day and thirty-nine years of getting up before the neighbourhood.
Fournil, n.
In French, the fournil is the room where the bread is made: the oven, the bench, the flour on everything. We named the shop after the part you don’t see.
We bake one kind of bread: slowly fermented sourdough, shaped by hand and baked in a wood-fired oven. Everything else on the menu, from croissants to the greengage tart, comes out of that same room and the same habits.
No shortcuts, no improvers, no frozen dough. When something runs out, it has run out; we would rather bake again tomorrow than keep bread on a shelf overnight. Yesterday’s loaves go at half price from 19:00.
1987
The starter’s birthday
18
h
Fermentation, every loaf
250
°C
Holm-oak oven
4
Bakes a day
11
People, two shops
Thirty-nine years
From one oven
to two shops.
Not much has changed, on purpose. These are the years when something did.
1987
A bakehouse on Calle del Ave María
Michel Arnaud, a baker from Lyon, and Carmen Ruiz, from two streets away, take over a closed bakery in Lavapiés. In March they mix the starter we still use.
1994
The oven
A mason from Ávila builds the brick oven that still bakes every loaf. It burns holm oak and takes ninety minutes to reach 250 degrees.
2003
Stone-milled flour
We start buying all our wheat and rye from a family mill near Toledo. It costs more and behaves differently every week. We would not go back.
Better flour, better bread.
2011
Lucía at the bench
Their daughter Lucía comes back from three years in Copenhagen and takes over the bakehouse. The pastries arrive: croissants, knots, the Saturday brioche.
2019
Chamberí
A second shop opens on Calle de Ponzano, supplied every morning from the Lavapiés oven by a van that leaves at 6:40.
2026
Still four bakes a day
Eleven people, two shops, one oven and the same jar on the shelf. The neighbours still call it the French bakery.
See you tomorrow at seven.
How we work
Three things
we won’t change.
I.
Flour from a mill
Wheat and rye stone-milled near Toledo, with the germ left in. It tastes of something, and it changes with the harvest, so we change with it.
II.
Eighteen hours
Every loaf ferments overnight, slowly, in the cold. Time does what additives do elsewhere: flavour, a crust that crackles, bread that keeps for four days.
III.
Fire, not a timer
A brick oven burning holm oak. Every bake is a little different, and somebody stands by it the whole time, listening to the crust.
The people
Who makes
the bread.
Eleven of us between the bakehouse and the two counters. A few you will probably meet.
Lucía Arnaud
Since 2011
Head baker, owner
Still shapes on Saturdays
Michel Arnaud
Since 1987
Founder
Comes in for coffee, stays till noon
Samir El Idrissi
Since 2009
Night shift, the oven
Lights the fire at 2:30
Rocío Benítez
Since 2014
Pastry
Three days per croissant
Pilar Gómez
Since 1998
Counter, Lavapiés
Knows your order
Andrés Vela
Since 2019
Counter, Chamberí
Ask him about the rye
“Good bread is mostly patience. The rest is getting up early.”
Michel Arnaud, founder
Come
and
smell
it.
Calle del Ave María 31, Lavapiés Calle de Ponzano 18, Chamberí