28 Aug Our Daily Bread

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about the changing bread consumption habits of the French:

The average Frenchman these days eats only half a baguette a day compared with almost a whole baguette in 1970 and more than three in 1900. Women, still the main shoppers in most families, eat about a third less than men, and young people almost 30 percent less than a decade ago.

The decline is so worrisome that Observatoire du Pain, the bakers’ and millers’ lobby, started a nationwide campaign in June that champions bread as promoting good health, good conversation and French civilization.

“Coucou, tu as pris le pain?” (“Hi there, have you picked up the bread?”) is the campaign’s slogan. Modeled on the American advertising campaign “Got Milk?” the bread slogan was plastered on billboards and inscribed on bread bags in 130 cities around the country.

I’m sorry to hear this, since regular access to fresh-baked breads is one of the major advantages of my life in Paris. I’ve cut back fairly recently on my bread consumption, but that’s because I wildly overindulged for so long. The novelty of having freshly-baked bread within two minutes, whenever I wanted it (at least between the hours of 7 AM and 8 PM) was too much for my never-strong willpower. I went through at least a baguette per day. Sometimes more, if I made myself a sandwich for lunch. I was on a student budget my first year here, and bread featured heavily as part of my diet. Once I started earning an actual salary, my bread consumption stayed the same, since I’d fallen into buying it fresh daily.

I did discover, though, that not all baguettes are created equal. As the Times article explains, the quality of bread in France changed after World War I when bakers abandoned the traditional slow process in favor of a quicker one using a yeast base. The quality further deteriorated in the second half of the 20^th century, as bakers turned to more industrial methods to produce a quicker and easier baguette.

But all hope was not lost:

The trend began to reverse itself in the 1980s. French millers provided bakers with a better flour and more marketing support. The renowned Parisian baker Lionel Poilâne blended large-scale production with artisanal practices like lengthy sourdough fermentation and wood oven baking.

Then in 1993, the government came to the rescue with a decree that created a special designation: “the bread of French tradition.” That bread has to be made exclusively with flour, salt, water and leavening — no additives.

The “tradition,” as it is called, is more expensive than the ordinary baguette, which uses additives, a fast-rising process and mechanization, and accounts for about 75 percent of the country’s bread sales.

The tradition costs a bit more but the difference in quality more than makes up for the extra 15 or 20 cents. A regular baguette is often bland, with an uninteresting texture. The tradition has substance, a real crust, and soft but not squishy interior.

I discovered this a few weeks after moving here, when I heard someone else ordering it. I never bothered getting baguettes after that, and I went through at least five or six per week. Sophie, who ran the boulangerie downstairs, told me I was her only regular American customer. She quickly started treating me as if I were part of the neighborhood fabric-asking after my boyfriend, about my hometown, about my future plans.

This relationship was particularly meaningful. It was my first step towards feeling as though I were- if not an insider -at least less of an outsider. I could become part of the patchwork of the neighborhood. And over the course of the next year or so, that’s what happened. I discovered the butcher, who thought I was British because I ordered so much sliced bacon. And the woman who ran the little wine store down the block, always ready to recommend cheap, delicious red wines. The takeout kebab place, where they always put extra red cabbage on my sandwich. But Sophie and her bakery were my first point of entry, where I realized that the linguistic and cultural barriers were not insurmountable obstacles.

And there was one unforeseen advantage to getting my daily bread. Sophie and her husband were friendly with some concert promoters, and were often going to shows around Paris. One Saturday morning I went down to pick up my bread.

“I meant to ask you,” said Sophie. “What are you doing tonight? Because if you don’t have anything going on, I have some extra U2 tickets for their concert at the Stade de France. We’re going to sit in one of the boxes, so we don’t need them.”

Well, why not? I liked U2 well enough, and I’d never been to one of their concerts. I accepted with thanks and asked how much I owed her for the tickets.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “They’d just go to waste, so don’t worry about it.”

I left the boulangerie with a loaf of bread and three U2 tickets, priced at 144 euros apiece. Total cost to me: 1 euro and 10 cents.

Emily Seftel Copyright(c) 2013 All Rights Reserved