The first time that little French children are allowed to go somewhere alone is often to go to the local bakery. And when they break the end of the baguette on the way home, the smell of bread mixes with the feeling of freedom. It's a very poetic anecdote, but it contains an element of truth about the sacred role of bread and the baker in France. It’s one of the things that attracted me, an English baker, to this country.
I worked and lived in Paris and Marseille, and I learned that while the bond between the French and bread is admirable in many ways, it relies on an entire network of political, social and economic relationships that make it make it less charming than it appears from the outside. First of all, the sale of frozen industrial products continues to increase in France.
Lots of work
The Spanish company Europastry, which is one of the main players in this booming sector, recently stated that, “during a blind tasting, it is impossible to tell the difference” between its frozen products and their non-frozen artisanal equivalent. Frozen pastries, pastries and cakes represented 24% of products sold in France in 2021, more than in Great Britain and Spain.
The romantic image conveyed by this symbol of French identity that is the baguette also turns out to be more complex when studied closely. Born to please the Parisian bourgeoisie, its production is very expensive. The space it takes up in the oven makes its baking less efficient than that of a larger loaf, and to obtain the “shiny” crust so sought after, it takes a lot of work, work which must be done the same morning as the cooking, which forces bakers to give up sleeping at night.
Premixes and improvers
This problem is not new: one of the laws adopted during the Commune of Pa
France
