Rodolphe Landemaine (vegan) - A Baker & Pastry Chef Re-inventing France’s Traditional Baking Arts, Part 3 of 4

Today, let us head to Paris for a tour of Land & Monkeys. We are fortunate that Mr. Landemaine will be our personal guide! "In a French boulangerie-pâtisserie, there are four trades. There’s the salty part for lunch; there’s the sweet part with the pastries; there’s the viennoiserie for breakfast; then, there’s the bread."

Mr. Landemaine will now show us some of his sandwich offerings. "We substituted all the animal products (with vegan ones), and we manage to have 200 customers come in for lunch in this small eatery." Mr. Landemaine says that the most popular sandwich at Land & Monkeys is the Campagnard, or the “Rustic.” It is a sandwich that contains his homemade “pâté.” "People don’t even realize it’s a vegan 'pâté.' Now, we incorporate hazelnuts, lentils, and so on, to produce a vegan 'pâté,' and the end-result is extraordinary. For the pastry part, the sweet part, we kept the great classics of French bakery: fresh fruit tartlets, lemon meringue tartlets, and there is the chocolate cake with 100% cocoa.”

“And for the bread, we have breads from all over the world, namely, the signature breads of each country; for example, the German 'schwartz brot,' the 'sourdough bread' of Anglo-Saxon countries, the Italian 'focaccia,' the French 'baguette.' We use 100% organic flours milled from ancient wheat.”

“We urgently need to make this switch. 70 billion (land) animals are eaten every year. This is such an astronomical number, which is not even quantifiable by the common mortal, There is an absolute urgency for ecological reasons, for ethical reasons, and for health reasons to switch to a predominantly plant-based diet. For me, my initiative as a baker is to contribute a small piece of the puzzle, but we need millions of people to come together, so that very, very quickly, humanity approaches a diet of veganism. This is my secret dream, my innermost dream. For those people worldwide who wish to contact me, they are very welcome. There is a website, land-and-monkeys.com They should not hesitate if they want to communicate with us. We are very open. We share a lot of things with people, and we take time to answer questions."