Daily Bread

Think about France and sooner or later you visualize the baguette. Like hoopy T-shirts, twirly moustaches and Gauloise cigarettes, the baguette is an icon of French life.

Let’s face it, the French eat a lot of bread and it is a very important aspect of French life. There are even laws governing bread and baking. For example, there is a law which states that fresh bread must be available for purchase in every commune (roughly the equivalent of a parish) a certain number of days each week. A further law requires that each boulangerie must close for at least one day each week.

The baguette (with its bigger siblings) represents only one of the many sorts of bread widely available in France. Pain de Campagne (a coarser white bread), Pain de Seigle (rye), Pain au Cinq (or six or dix) Céréales, Pain Complet (wholemeal) are only some of the bread varieties, which come in a dizzying number of shapes and sizes, available in most boulangeries. If in your country you’re used to buying your bread from the supermarket where you live, or if you buy one of the mass-produced national brands, you may have slipped into thinking that bread is homogenous, that wholemeal bread is more or less the same wherever you buy it, that one baker’s white loaf is much like another’s. Not a bit of it. There is a noticeable difference in the ouput of different boulangers and each attracts his fiercely loyal customers as well as vehement critics.

Sadly, the availability of much cheaper bread in supermarkets, together with the reluctance of younger people to opt for a career which involves rising in the small hours of the morning six days each week and working until mid-afternoon, means that the number of boulangeries falls each year. To fulfil the law governing the availability of bread, communes have to arrange for mobile bread shops to visit several times a week or for bread to be delivered to a Depot such as the local bar.

Of course, the French aren’t the only bread fanatics in the world. I’m reminded that the Welsh are so obsessed with the output of one baker that they sing a song about it at virtually every rugby international. You may have heard it :

Bread of Evans
Bread of Evans
Feed me ‘til I want no more…..

Well I must finish now. I’ve got to bake a loaf in the bread machine!