Heroes Not Zombies

One of the most striking things about life in France is the importance of the “boulangerie” – the bakery. Really only the tiniest villages don’t have one, and if a small village is about to lose its boulangerie then the entire village feels like it is in serious decline.

It’s tempting to think that the hub of French culture is the cafe, the bistro, and the restaurant, and I don’t want to downplay that because that sector really does bring life to many towns and communities. The fact that all of those have been closed here in France since the middle of October and at the moment there is no definite prospective date for re-opening them has utterly changed what it feels like to live in France. When I walk through the main centre of my local town, Cognac, it feels very, very empty……particularly because all the cafes, bars and restaurants are closed.

But throughout the whole pandemic, the boulangeries have stayed open and although they might restrict the number of customers in the shop at any one time, there are queues outside them pretty much every day. Bread retains a key place in French culture and the French diet. It would be strange to sit down for a meal in a French restaurant and not be served a basket of fresh bread. The price of a “baguette” is set by the government and all boulangeries offer baguettes at that price – a price related to a fraction of the average hourly income (I think – it might be something a bit different from that, but the principle is that bread should be affordable to everyone).

A typical boulangerie looks just like that one in the photo above. There is always a range of different breads on offer, and always a range of pastries and cakes. I know a lot of people now have gluten sensitivities but it doesn’t seem impossible to find a particular bread that even they can eat. One of my local boulangeries makes a bread they call “All Black” and not only is it one of the most delicious breads I’ve ever tasted, it seems to cause no problem at all for people who are gluten sensitive, even if the baker doesn’t advertise it on that basis. The thing is there remains both a huge diversity of grains and recipes in French boulangeries and different parts of the country also have their own particular local breads.

The typical boulangerie in France is owned and run by a single baker, and he or she (mostly he) has often chosen baking as a way of life. In fact, in many cases this remains one of the crafts and lifestyles handed down through the generations…..something which you can still find in a number of areas of trade and work in this country. I really admire that. It enables someone to choose work which feels meaningful, purposeful, important and satisfying. There’s far too much work in the world which is not like that.

On thing you won’t find in a boulangerie is industrial, plastic-wrapped, sliced, white bread. You can find it in supermarkets but even there the greatest amount of the bread for sale is baked on site and looks sort of like what you see in that photo above.

I know that both from the perspective of carbohydrates and gluten that in some cultures now bread is not held in such high esteem. But, here, in France, it remains a key part of life – freshly baked, locally produced, bread from a baker who has dedicated his life to making it.

Vive les artisans!