Bread Alert

An astonishing figure - ten billion baguettes are sold in France every year. Not ten million, ten billion. I had no idea. Even so, there is such concern over falling levels in bread consumption, that the Observatoire du Pain - the bakers' and millers' lobby - have started a nationwide campaign. The average Frenchmen is now only eating half a baguette a day, whereas in the seventies it was a whole baguette. In the 1900s it was three baguettes a day. These days women eat a third less bread than men and young people apparently, thirty percent less than a decade ago. 

'Coucou, tu as pris le pain?' (Hi, have you picked up the bread?) started a couple of months ago in 130 cities, promoting bread as 'good for health, good for conversation, good for French civilisation and part of the traditional French meal. Certainly where we are, bread is always served with food and included in the price of the meal. Cravant still has its own boulangerie as does Panzoult the next-door village to us. In and around Chinon, there's at least seven boulangeries, along with a small Carrefour outlet in the centre of town that sells bread. Our big Leclerc on the outskirts has an in-house bakery offering a wide range of breads, but a small independent has just set up inside Leclerc as well, next to the restaurant and from what we've seen is doing good trade. Nationally however numbers of boulangeries are declining. France still has the most independent bakeries in the world - around 32,000 - but back in the fifties there was something in the region of 54,000.

Paris  holds a bread making competition every year, to select the city's best artisinal bread maker. The winner supplies the Élysée with bread for a year. This year, 152 baguette tastings later, Ridha Khadher carried off the prize, who left Tunisia twenty-four years ago as a teenager, to make bread in France. In May every year there is also a bread festival around the feast of Saint Honoré, the patron saint of bakers, during which different breads can be tasted. But also demonstrations are given and you can find out how to become a professional bread maker. It's not a job I would like. For a start the hours are unsociable.

There are two particular types of baguette - the 'ordinaire' and the 'tradition'. The two are very different. The distinction in part came about because of a government decree in 1993, that the bread of French tradition had to be made from flour, salt, water, leavening and no additives. So recent times have seen the emergence of artisanal bakers who are dedicated to excellence and tradition. The baguette ordinaire uses additives, a fast-rising process and mechanisation. It accounts for seventy five percent of bread sales in France and is incredibly cheap but relatively tasteless. 'The tradition' takes three to four hours from start to finish because of the very very slow fermentation process. As a result the contrast in taste, aroma and appearance greater. Also each tradition is made by hand. Even so given the lengthy process a tradition is only twenty cents more expensive than a baguette ordinaire.

We're up in Paris for a week in October. While we're out exploring there'll hopefully be a moment to the 9th arrondissement for a visit to Philippe Levin. A baker whose 'traditions' are so renowned thaton Sunday mornings, the queues for his bread often go round the block. He's been quoted as being a little disappointed with the Observatoire du Pain campaign, which he feels is an insipid as the inside of an ordinary baguette. He'd rather that bread is promoted as 'an object of pleasure' and that 'we should celebrate breads that make your tastebuds dance'. Yes indeed.