I've been mourning the deterioration in quality of Bonaparte Bakery's baguettes. They've lost that balance between crustiness and crumbiness and Wagshal's, where I go to buy them, no longer stocks their ficelles which I preferred to the baguettes. I don't know if that means that Bonaparte's doesn't bake them any more. But at any rate, I don't mind too much. I've discovered a proper French baker baking proper French baguettes and croissants - Bertrand Houlier, owner-baker of Saint Michel Bakery.

Actually, he wasn't originally a baker. Back in Versailles where he was born and lived until coming to Washington in 2007, he was involved in a side of the food business which doesn't have a title in English - "metier de bouche". It means "the business of the mouth." Isn't that lovely? It's not how English-speakers think about food much, is it. At any rate, it meant he was in charge of the entire food business of an enormous supermarket, from fresh produce right through to whatever appeared on the prepared foods counters, from patisseries through to salads and composed  traditional dishes of France, though he says he was most specialized in the bakery section.

So when his wife was offered a job teaching at Washington's French Lycée, he thought it would give him a good opportunity to open a bakery of his own in a market he was confident had little experience of how good French produce should taste.

To this end, he is fiercely loyal to his ingredients. He tried baking with US flour, honestly. He tried using local butter. And when it came to the sandwiches he sells, he began with US ham, too. But nothing compared to the flavors he knew in France and which he wanted to share.

So to bake his baguettes, he's importing French-made dough. For his patisseries he's using only Charentes butter. He's even imported the machinery to bake with. The French dough is to tide him over until he has worked out whether or not he's able to import French flour in quantity without any detriment to quality. Over the next couple of months, he's testing it out and if it produces the even more perfect baguette he's looking for, that's what you'll get in baguettes in future.

If you think this is taking Chauvinism several steps too far, read Jeffrey Steingarten's essay on his own tortured efforts to find a half-way decent flour to produce a proper French baguette. The shortcomings of US flour were most evident to Houlier in his attempts to create the Bordeaux area specialty, cannelés. These little fluted twice-cooked pastries are such a challenge to US enthusiasts that they generate lengthy threads on Chowhound, eGullet and more. All these bakers need, it would seem, to solve their patisserie disasters, is French ingredients.

You can judge for yourselves. Houlier's bakery is east of the Rockville Pike in Wilkins Court. Here you'll find perfectly achieved tartes au citron, raspberry tarts, strawberry tarts, in two sizes, éclairs and more, and a wide selection of breads, croissants, brioches and breakfast pastries. Don't ignore the almond croissant. Or the pain au chocolat. Houlier's sandwiches are one of the best bargains around, priced so as not to rob hard-working secretaries, he says. They're made by slicing his two-foot long baguette in half and filling one portion with something from a selection of ingredients that might include Canadian ham, the closest he can come to French jambon. The mustard he uses also comes from France. Anyone who's traveled there doesn't have to feel a traitor to US condiments to agree that French mustard in the US is a far distant cousin, as are cornichons, which he also imports. He in touch with suppliers of cheese to Rungis, the massive wholesale produce market in Paris, to import the most perfectly ripened cheeses. It's all because, says Houlier, he wants you to have the absolutely accurate taste of France.

The bakery is open Monday to Friday, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Saturdays, as well as on Wednesdays and Fridays, you'll find Houlier manning his stall at the Montgomery Farm Women's Cooperative building on Wisconsin Ave in Bethesda, between Leland and Willow Streets.There he sells his breads and his breakfast pastries.

Saint Michel Bakery, 5540 Wilkins Court, Rockville. (No phone).

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