Ask Alain Coumont if his sourdough country bread is as good as Poil??ne's and he gives you a Gallic shrug, which means both "of course" and "I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to say so."

"It should be. It's the same process," the Belgian baker says about his rival, the famous, Paris-based boulangerie. "Poil??ne's is not organic. I don't know why."

The Belgian bread maker was in town last week to help launch the first Canadian outpost of the enormously popular bakery-caf?? Le Pain Quotidien at Eglinton Ave. W. near Avenue Rd. He flew in from his home outside Montpellier, France, where he grows grapes and olives on a 42-hectare farm.

Le Pain Quotidien, which means "daily bread" in French, will open its doors April 9 with four more GTA locations to follow: 18 Yorkville Ave. and 30 Desera Dr. in Thornhill in July or August, and two in the Royal Bank Plaza at 200 Bay St. in October, according to Canadian partners Phil Herman, Sandy Druck and Matthieu Devaux.

The loaves will be par-baked in the commissary at Leslie St. and York Mills Rd., and finished at the caf??s.

There's good reason to compare Coumont's $12 loaf of sourdough to Poil??ne's, which is flown to Holt Renfrew Caf?? on Bloor St. from Paris and costs $48.

That's because Coumont was inspired to make "pain levain," or leavened bread, as delicious as Lionel Poil??ne's, which he never forgot after tasting it in Paris. Indeed, it was the lack of a comparable bread in Brussels that prompted Coumont to open the first Le Pain Quotidien.

The round, country-style, sourdough bread, with its chewy crust and tangy, dense centre, is made from only three ingredients. It begins with a starter ' flour, water and salt that is divided and fed more water, flour and salt for 11 days, allowing wild yeast in the grain and air to colonize. The yeast converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and the resulting gas bubbles make the bread rise and give it texture.

Le Pain Quotidien uses organic flour from Grain Process Enterprises Ltd. in Scarborough, stone ground to their specifications. Because organic flour varies in quality, the bread isn't the same every time. But the chef doesn't care if one day it is a little flatter than the day before.

"Every loaf is imperfect," he said with a grin.

The idea behind Le Pain, Coumont explains, was to create the ambience of a European farmhouse kitchen.

Central to the store's design is the communal table, 6.5 metres long and 110 centimetres wide, which seats 24 people. The replica of the original sits next to a floor-to-ceiling fireplace and beneath a sheet of windows built into the roof that bathes the exposed brick space with lots of light.

The original occupies a place of pride in Coumont's first store in Brussels, which opened in 1990. He needed furniture, so when he saw it at a pine furniture warehouse, he bought it for about $300.

"I thought it could be okay," he said. "I thought not everyone will sit together and if it doesn't work, I will chop it up and use it for firewood."

The table has become synonymous with Le Pain Quotidien worldwide, which has about 90 bakery-cafes in 14 countries. Coumont is a shareholder in the Belgian-owned parent company, PQ Licensing, and describes himself as chief creative officer. The idea is good bread is a foundation for delicious food, such as tartines (open-faced sandwiches). That's why you'll find no sun-dried tomato loaves or olive fougasse here.

"The bread is really the star," Coumont says.

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