Bread in France

A few crumbs of knowledge

This image was found on Pinterest, but apparently is actually by Henri Robideau. Landmark, rooftop signage on the McGavin Bakery building on the SW corner of West Broadway and Arbutus Street in Vancouver, BC. The stand-out display was installed in 1947 and eventually deteriorated to the point of removal circa-1973. The hand had a shirt cuff but lost it to a wind storm.

When I was a kid, bread came from McGavins bakery, in plastic, sliced. I think we mostly had “brown bread” because it was alleged to be healthier than “white bread”, which when they did a study and fed it to white rats, killed them.

In France however bread begins and ends with the baguette.

In fact bread in France is a complicated subject, and although baguettes are ubiquitous, les boulangeries have many other kinds of loaf, as well as sweet pastries, croissants, and other baked items.

The thing is that “baguette” is a personal thing. They come in many sizes, many types of crust, and with many different interior textures. And, of course, flavours. My preference is a fairly crunchy crust and dryer interior. Other people prefer them soft.

So when you move house, as we have done several times, your first job is to find a local boulangerie that sells baguettes that you like. We have three boulangeries within a two minute walk of our Air BnB. The closest one is just plain not a good baker. Of the two others, one makes bread just a little bit too soft for our tastes.

In fact the best baker that we’ve found in Alençon is the Boulangerie de la Halle au Ble, across the river Sarthe, right beside La Halle au Blé itself. Sadly they’re a fifteen minute walk from our door.

Pretty much every boulangerie has a sign like this hanging above their door:

In all honesty it isn’t really an indication of special skill or artistry, it’s marketing. It’s entirely possible that the little old hole in the wall boulangerie with no such sign might be better.

Now, once you have found your source for the perfect baguette you get to repeat the search for the rest of your essential baked goods. The baker who does bread so well will not necessarily manage to produce a decent croissant. I guess that’s not surprising - they are both pretty specialized items - but if you can get both in one place then you have won the jackpot.

And once you have both your bread and your croissants sorted, you get to move on to sweet pastries, tarts, and a hundred other little small, sweet, and oh so wonderful treats. They too are a speciality, and can range from divine to overly sweet and overly sticky.

To be honest, a lot of people buy supermarket baguettes and are very happy with them. And in an act of further honesty, you can go to Intermarché or E Leclerc and buy a plastic wrapped loaf of sliced bread. I guess that since arriving in France we’ve become baguette snobs… or connoisseurs.