The French Baguette Isn’t Actually French

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Foreign.

Welcome to the first episode of the Real Fish Wives of Paris.

We are going to be breaking down some of the major myths around French food and offering you some pretty awesome little factoids and fun cultural stuff about French gastronomy.

Yeah, we're going to give you some annoying party facts that might start fights.

That's, that's our vibe.

And today we're going to open with baguettes.

But before we do that, Emily, why are you qualified to be a fish wife?

Why are you qualified to be an opinionated, vulgar lady telling me truth about French food and wine?

Well, I mean, I think I was born kind of angry already.

Like, look at any baby picture of me.

It's like I've already got the vibes of the angry nearly 40 year old woman I'm growing into right now.

But I've also spent the last almost 20 years of my life working as an investigative journalist on all things French gastronomy.

And I, I love pissing off French people.

So if I can figure out that some kind of myth they're telling everybody about their food is wrong, I'm very happy to throw open the the box on that and show everybody the maggots that are lying underneath.

Oh, now we need to find some cheese that has maggots in it.

I bet there are some, but that's for a later episode.

That's for a different podcast.

No, that'd be a different episode.

Caroline, what are you doing here in France?

How long have you been here?

And what's your, what's your vibe?

Well, I've been in LYON now for seven years.

I know that is short compared to your 18 years in Paris, but I have been in wine for almost 20 years and am the owner of Leon Wine Tastings.

We do wine tastings in English for tourists.

But I've also been a longtime fan of French cuisine.

I even actually did the Cordon Bleu cuisine diploma many, many, many years ago.

Fancy, fancy.

I think between the two of us, we can tell some pretty interesting stories about French food and wine and get to the heart of it.

What really happened?

What's the real story?

And is everything that we think it's French as French as it seems?

I mean, I think that's exactly right.

And I think what's amazing about living here is that everybody cares so much about their food.

And we care, too.

We care a lot.

We love France and we love living here.

And I think one thing that we've always bonded over is, you know, finding some awesome, great tradition, some amazing chef, some amazing producers.

Um, and often these fantasies that we have, whether we're abroad looking at France or in France with the French, are less interesting than the truth.

The truth is pretty wacky, especially in the case of this, our first episode about the Frenchest thing of all time.

Baguettes.

Should we get started?

Emily, will you school me on the history of the baguette?

The humble.

The humble, everyday, delicious French staple that is beloved around the world?

I mean, the humble baguette.

The.

The.

The stereotypically French baguette.

The baguette that is as French as the beret and mustaches and bicycles and Camembert is actually a relatively recent invention.

This is mind blowing to me.

This is mind blowing to me because this just seems like it's something that's been here forever.

I mean, and it.

I think a lot of people would think that, and I think a lot of even French people would think that.

But the reality is that the Baguette is a 19th century invention that arises in France at the confluence of international influence, immigration, industrialization, and economic changes.

And I think that's something that we're going to see over and over again, is that often you have a bunch of different factors that kind of come together, and what's born is something as beautiful and wonderful as the baguette.

So with the baguette in particular, we have to look back in time a little bit to something that we still see in French bakeries today.

The pain de Compagne, the country loaf.

Right.

So if you go into most French bakeries today, they're going to be called boulangerie.

And that's a reference to the boule, the big round loaf of bread.

Yeah, a boule Is, you know, a little bit bigger than a football, I guess, but it's round.

And it is a thick, crusty bread with a nice chewy, sourdough interior.

Good boule.

Right.

And this is a bread that will last for a few days.

You don't have to eat it on the same day.

And those are.

Yeah, very common, I think, still.

We also, in French, will sometimes call them miche.

And tell us, Emily, what is miche?

It's a boob.

Boob.

And that's because they're round, the French, they love that.

They love to name things after shapes, which is also the case for the baguette.

The baguette is also what we call.

Well, I guess baguette means stick, and so we named baguettes after sticks.

And then chopsticks are also baguettes.

Harry Potter's little magic wand is a baguette.

Would baguette ever be used to describe.

You know what?

I don't think so.

Although that really surprises me about the French.

They wouldn't have gone through a lot.

Of names for it.

They do, yeah.

Yeah.

I guess not.

Baguette.

I guess not.

Baguette.

That's funny.

Yeah.

So baguette is a.

Is a word that you will hear a lot.

So if someone offers you baguette at a Chinese restaurant, they're asking you if you want chopsticks.

Not baguette.

Exactly.

Does not pair that well with Chinese food, I would think.

It doesn't.

And yet I have seen French people of a certain generation having their Chinese takeout with bread on the side, because bread is omnipresent in France.

But we'll get to that.

I mean, this is the thing.

So, like, we go back in time, bread is almost the majority of what the average person is eating in a day.

Yeah.

Up until the 19th century, we're really talking about a pound of bread per person per day.

That's a lot of bread.

Yeah, but it's understandable.

It's not like people gorging themselves on bread for the pleasure of it.

It's because they can't afford anything else.

It's the staple food in this country.

For something as notorious as a baguette, there's gotta be a lot of mythology around that.

I am pretty sure I heard somewhere that, like, Napoleon invented the baguette.

I mean, that can't be right.

We know that Napoleon's name gets attached to a lot of things that he doesn't deserve.

So can you please tell me some of the myths surrounding the humble, the perfect beggar Absolutely.

I mean, the Napoleon myth is probably my favorite one, and it's the most far fetched.

So the idea is that Napoleon getting ready to invade Russia.

Never a good idea.

Never.

It's never worked.

Stop it, please.

In January.

In January.

I mean, the male audacity, it is really, really dumb.

So he's getting ready and he's like, oh, I know.

I'm gonna make it easier for my soldiers to carry their rations.

I'm gonna get the baker to bake a loaf of bread so slender that they can slip it down the leg of their pants.

That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

How could you march with a baguette in your pants?

Nobody wants crumbs in their pants.

And I'm pretty sure it would bend.

I mean, French people aren't that tall, right, either.

So you're walking with like, like a, like a cast on your knee.

Fall out.

Like what?

I mean, it's the stupid.

Are you happy to see me or is that.

Wait, is that a baguette in your pants or are you happy to see me?

I mean, like that.

Yeah, yeah.

No, so probably not.

Second one is a little more sort of like.

Okay, I could see that.

And it sort of puts the baguettes invention around the time of the founding of the Paris Metro.

Okay, so we're digging the tunnels for the metro.

When is this, by the way?

We're talking like late 19th century.

So the Paris Metro was slated to open for the World's Fair.

So we're kind of getting things ready.

We're modifying what Paris looks like.

I mean, Paris underwent huge renovations through the mid to end of the 19th century.

Right?

We had multiple multiples because that's the.

Like, big important one for wine, for Bordeaux.

So.

When the Eiffel Tower is built.

Okay?

So what we've done to make this a reality is bring in workers from all over France.

And what I'm sure you know as well, before World War I, we're not really talking about one nation with one language.

I mean, that is so incredible.

And, you know, I know we talk about it a lot with Italy.

People, I think, have slightly more awareness of that.

But these are places that had these huge regional variations, including language before the train system.

I mean, remember when, you know, most people had to walk to get anywhere?

I mean, if we walked to Paris right now, it Would take us, like, two and a half weeks.

Right.

You know, and so they.

They had different languages in different regions.

They're speaking, you know, in.

In l', Occitane, we have Alien.

And I mean, what else?

Yeah, yeah.

And so, I mean, I think we hear about it more in Italy because it's also a political thing there, where you have the unification of Italy.

France is technically unified.

Yeah.

But, like, you don't care what the king is speaking.

Like, you're just talking to the people around.

Then you're like.

You're talking to your neighbors and your geese, so you talk to them in Alsatian or whatever.

So they're all in Paris.

They're not really speaking the same language.

They're not really getting along with each other, and they start getting into fights in these, like, dark underground tunnels.

Sounds great.

Super good idea.

Just like, all this, like, male energy.

Yeah.

And so the foreman of the project is like, damn.

And goes to the local baker and is like, baker, baker, you've got to help me.

I need you to invent a loaf of bread that my guys can rip rather than slicing, so that I can tell them they can't have knives in the tunnels and they'll stop stabbing each other.

That's great.

I mean, brilliant.

Like, it makes sense because you do really need knives for the big loafs of yesteryear.

Right.

You need.

You need to get into that baby.

But a baguette is obviously much more portable too, but it's something that you can rip apart with your bare hands full of Metro tunnel dust.

Sounds more reasonable.

Unfortunately, also not true.

The last and even more reasonable story is that there was a law that was passed that made it illegal for bakers to start work before 4am and so, because those big round loaves take forever to bake through, and a baguette can cook in, like, 15 minutes, suddenly they decided to just start making these long, skinny loaves rather than these big round loaves.

And so it meant they could get a little more sleep in the morning.

So, Emily, is it true that that law was enacted?

That law was enacted.

It was enacted following the Commune, which is this sort of last major uprising of the 19th century in Paris.

And so, tail end of the 19th century, same timeline, but also probably not the reason the baguette was invented.

Okay, so tell me the true story, please.

True story is a little more complicated, and it involves a lot of things that were happening at the same time.

Okay.

So perhaps one of the most important things was that Viennese bakers had Already started working with a faster acting leavening than the sourdough that was so popular in France.

So let me clarify.

Viennese bakers being from Austria, from Vienna, right?

Yeah.

Not from Australia.

Not from Australia.

Okay.

And so that is what we would probably know as like, you know, the yeast that we bake with today, like, maybe it wasn't powdered, but, you know, when you're baking, you have two yeast you can work with.

One is fresh yeast, it's sort of a crumbly paste, and then there's the powdered yeast.

But that didn't exist until this sort of development.

Right.

And so basically what they realized is that they could use brewer's yeast, and it was a faster acting yeast.

Okay.

And so the Austrians had figured this out, and what it paved the way for was more flexibility in terms of kind of enriched breads.

So breads that might have some sugar or some butter or some eggs in them.

Okay.

And so that's becoming popular in Vienna.

And then this baker moves to Paris.

His name is August Zhang, and he opens a bakery called Boulangerie Viennoise.

And one thing that I always think is really funny is that a lot of people, French or otherwise, seem to think the French have this, like, fierce pride in protecting their food and they don't want any outside influence.

And what actually happens is the French appropriate the hell out of things.

And then they just very quickly pretend like it was always French.

They forget.

They forget.

It's convenient.

Forgetting.

So this time is really interesting.

And it's the industrial revolution.

We have these new technologies emerging.

We have a greater scale of food production emerging, and we also have new ingredients like refined flour, like, that didn't exist before.

Can you tell me a little bit about the.

The technology emerging during this period?

Yeah, absolutely.

So not only do we have faster acting yeasts, we have more refined flours coming in from Hungary.

So a blend called gru, which is a super fun word to try and say if you're just learning French.

Grou.

Yeah, sounds like gruel.

Gruel.

Choke on the R. And we also have the Viennese sort of make paving the way for steam ovens, which are gonna leaven things more quickly.

That's crazy.

So all of a sudden we have this confluence of finer, richer, faster to bake breads that the French literally call fantasy breads.

Fantasy bread.

I'm laughing right now because you.

You just did it.

You did it again.

Where you use a French word in English that we would never use confluence.

And that's like such A French way of saying, obviously it is an English word confluence of, like, when things meet, but it's such a French way of saying it.

And when you've been here for too long, that's what happens.

And I do it too.

Like, there's definitely some words that are words in English, but we don't use them in the same way.

And then I find myself doing it in English and I'm like, I've been here too long.

Yeah, I know my sister is going to get really mad watching this podcast because I'm always doing stuff like that.

And she's like, in the bus, really?

Were you in the bus?

That's so funny.

Were you in the train?

You were in the train.

That's hilarious.

I'm going to call you out.

Please do call me out.

I won't change anything, but I like being called out.

Well, we're, you know, we are vulgar fish wives.

So we have, I think one thing that is worth explaining a little bit about bread baking.

And so I, like many of us, was a pandemic sourdough bitch and failed completely.

I tried it, like four times, and I think at the last time it.

Was like, okay, I only made sourdough discard crumpets.

Perfect.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

I think it's not that hard if you're good at it and you get into the rhythm of it.

But, like, bakeries were still open, so there was no reason.

But, you know, refined white flour behaves very differently than whole grain flours or then higher protein flours.

The thing about these, the grau, I imagine, is that it was probably a softer, you know, lower protein flour.

And so that would have required a different way of working as well.

And so we're talking about, essentially, you know, the French or an Austrian version of, like, Wonder Bread.

Like, it's.

This is a.

An industrial product.

Yeah, it's light, it's white, it's fluffy.

And it's.

When we call it a fantasy bread, I mean, when you said bakeries in France were still open during the pandemic, I think this is a really interesting point about the way that the French perceive their bread and always have.

It's an essential product.

We said essential businesses were allowed to stay open.

Bakeries were essential because bread was something that people were eating every day.

Um, whereas a fantasy bread was not a fantasy bread was something that you got if you had money and you didn't need the nutrients in your whole grain flour, you were eating it because it was delicious.

Well, and it must Be said in this smaller shape, in this thinner form.

Yes.

It's quicker.

Yes.

It's lighter, it's fluffier.

It also goes bad much more quickly.

Baguette is not good the next day.

It just.

I mean, it's not even good the same day sometimes.

Yeah, I'd say like four hours.

You've got to eat a baguette.

You have a much shorter window.

Whereas the traditional, you know, sourdough leavened breads can last for days.

Yeah.

So, you know, when we're talking about the societal status of this bread, this fantasy bread, it is something that is a luxury because you can afford to waste the bit.

You can waste it if it goes bad.

Yeah, absolutely.

When did the baguette become go from being a fantasy to being normal?

The very first time we actually see the word baguette isn't until the beginning of the 20th century and it's starting to become normal.

And then we have a period of great austerity in France that's going to change.

I mean, I think we'll see this coming back again and again.

Again is going to change the way the French eat, drink, produce food forever, which is the period of the two world wars.

There's very heavy rationing going around.

And specifically, when you look at urban centers in occupied territory, of which Paris is one, you're going to see people who don't have a lot of access to food at all.

And so specifically, when it comes to bread, this is going to mean a couple of things.

First of all, we're going to stop making white bread because it's wasteful to make white bread.

You get rid of the germ outside of the grain of wheat.

That's where a lot of the nutrients live.

If you get rid of that, you're feeding fewer people.

Oh, that's interesting.

It's like we.

We take it for granted completely.

Totally.

Yeah.

So you're going to have breads that are not only made with the whole wheat grain, they're also going to be reinforced with other stuff you've got lying around.

Like.

Okay, hit it.

I mean, some of it's okay, like acorns.

Okay.

Chestnuts, but also like sawdust.

Ah, delicious.

Fiber rich.

That's fun on the digestion.

Yeah, I bet.

Mm.

And.

And so it's gonna change the way that bread looks.

And what's gonna happen during the war is that we're also going to have industrialization, making it easier to feed soldiers.

And the byproducts of those developments can be felt, can be perceived in the Food systems of the ins.

Of the.

Of the United States, of France, of other countries following the end of the war.

So really familiar example in the US Shelf stable canned soup.

Okay.

Developed for ration packs.

When the war is over, the companies are like, ooh, what do we do with this technology?

I know.

Cream of chicken casserole.

Yeah.

Sell it to the housewives.

So, you know, you.

You grin through your pain and make yourself a casserole.

And it's, you know, easily replicable.

It's always going to be the same.

And the powers that be basically tell women that this is what they want, they should want for their families.

In France, something similar happens with bread.

We've industrialized a method of making fast leavened bread that has emulsifiers and stabilizers in the dough.

That means that it doesn't go off quite so quickly.

And so now we have extremely inexpensive bread available to everybody.

And it's a time of huge economic development.

Yep.

So you're eight, you have much more purchasing power.

You have access to inexpensive white bread.

It becomes quite banal, really, to have shitty white bread.

It's so mind blowing to me how recent this really is.

What?

So I think the best way for us to understand that is for us to get into what a baguette in France actually looks like today.

And this is something I think Americans can get really flustered by.

Like, what is a good baguette?

So in front of us, we have four baguettes.

We have one that is in sort of half plastic bag.

It is pretty pale.

It is pretty limp.

I would say flaccid.

Perhaps this you could stuff down your pants and it would probably just bend with your leg.

It is very consistent.

It has the swipes, the sort of, you know, knife marks over top.

And then it has a very consistent bottom.

And there's even like some perforations right on the bottom.

Yeah.

So it.

And it's got some kind of semolina or something on the bottom too.

There's some sort of thicker flour on the bottom.

So that is our very basic supermarket baguette.

And that's something that you'll find not only in supermarkets in France, but in A lot of bakeries sold as either a standard or an ordinary baguette.

Ordinary.

Then we have, you know, a bag of three different baguettes from the local bakery.

We have a long and skinny one.

This is the ficelle.

They, these have a lot more flour on them.

The other one didn't shed any flour at all when I pulled it out of the bag.

These ones are shed in flour.

They are very uneven.

They.

Well, the, the long skinny one is more uneven than the other two.

But they, they're rustic looking.

They're rustic, yeah.

They look awesome.

They're darker, they have more caramelization.

They have a lot more texture.

And then we have two more normal sized baguettes.

Both of these, compared to the big floppy limp baguette, are pointier on the ends.

And these also both have a lot of flour.

We can see that there's actually just one slash mark that is lengthways.

And we have one that is a lot paler than the other.

And so that is something.

When you go to a bakery in France, a good bakery, you can actually ask for the croissant.

You can say you want it more or less cooked.

You know, this has.

The edges of it are actually a little bit burnt.

But I really like a crusty, you know, bien cris baguette.

So I'm also really up for a sort of more cooked one.

Although I usually would order a mi.

Cree and, and the French would tell you so.

The French also are obsessed with their digestion.

They talk about it all the time.

And they would tell you that a bien cruis baguette, a darker one, is better for the digestion than a less cooked one.

Why?

Because it's not.

It's cooked through all the way when it comes out of the oven.

Whereas an undercooked or a less cooked one, when it comes out of the oven, it's slightly undercooked inside and carries over.

Which is also why they say you should never eat a hot croissant.

And that's one place where I'm very happy to deviate from the norm because I think a hot croissant is delicious.

It's delicious.

Hot baguette is delicious too.

So these are, are pretty different.

Like, there is an obvious visual difference between the shitty baguette and the good baguette.

Right.

So let's.

Well, and I think what, what seems, what's really interesting about when we look at these three things is that the, the more rustic looking baguettes that you've gotten seem more old fashioned.

Yes.

And their name makes Us think that because they're called baguette de tradition.

Baguette de tradition.

Baguette.

Tradit.

Tradit.

If you want a little tradie.

Yeah, you gotta say it faster.

Tradie.

That is funny.

It's this revisionist history.

Exactly.

Right.

So we're taking the dough and the.

Otherwise, the techniques of sourdough from the boule, from the miche, from the boobs, and we are applying it to this form of what is an industrial bread.

Was invented as an industrial bread.

Right.

And so the differences we're going to see as we sort of try and taste these are reflected in the fact that when the traditional baguette was invented, it was basically invented because bakers were sick of making this ordinary baguette.

They did.

They wanted to do something better.

But the expectation was that the ordinary baguette was going to be cheap.

Yes.

And it still is.

It is cheap.

It's very cheap.

I mean, I don't know how much this one was.

This was 120.

And that's expensive.

Obviously, you can find them for, like, if you're in the supermarket, you can sometimes find them for like 50, 60 cents.

If you're in a bakery, maybe like 90 cents a euro.

Whereas a traditional baguette has no real limitations on its price.

And still I find often it's going to be like 120, 140.

So how does that work?

Because obviously this takes so much more time and effort.

Right, the rules.

So there are rules, right?

Of course.

So basically, France, there are rules.

France, there are rules.

1993, We have a law that's passed called the French Bread Decree.

Of course, it's a real thing.

Like this is this.

I'm not making up.

Right.

We don't.

We don't make shit up on this podcast.

We don't.

So the.

The traditional baguette was invented by way of the French Bread decree, which says that to use the word traditional, you're only allowed to use four ingredients.

Water, wheat flour, salt, and either yeast or sourdough starter.

Okay.

But the dough needs to be slow fermented.

Okay.

So you're in a bit of a gray area.

You might be a pure sourdough, you might be using.

So sourdough in French is levain.

Levain.

And yeast is l'.

Ouvure.

So you might be using l', ouvre, but you'll still be slow fermenting.

So you'll still get a little bit of that sort of fermenty taste.

Yeah.

And that's.

Yeah, that is interesting because I have seen a variety of qualities in a baguette tradit.

Absolutely.

And so this is the real deal.

This is really good.

This is from my favorite local bakery, bakery Les Artistes.

If you're in Lyon, you should go there.

Let's do a little asmr cracking these open.

So I think I should start with the normal baguette.

That is sort of a normal cooking.

I'm going to get flour all over my microphone.

I'm going to just use my hands to rip it.

It's beautiful.

And ripping.

The baguette is beautiful.

We're going to look at the texture of that in a second.

But I'm going to pull apart our flaccid baguette as well.

There's no crunch.

There's nothing there.

It's really disappointing.

Where's the joy?

So let's take a look inside of our insipid baguette.

We have not much variation between the crust and the interior.

The holes are pretty uniform.

And honestly, this isn't even that shitty.

Like, this is the shittiest baguette I could find within a few block radius.

But, like, here in Lyon, we have really good bread and pretty high standards.

So this is not that bad.

It is pretty spongy inside, very uniform.

It smells like.

Like white bread.

I mean, it.

Honestly, it tastes fine.

It's just like, I'm such an almond mom when I say this.

It's like, not worth the calories.

You know, there's nothing special about it.

But our big baguette or our.

But our traditional baguette.

And actually, I'll rip off a bigger piece so we can see this.

You can really see that it has.

It has a visible difference between the crust and the interior.

There is a much more open crumb.

It's much stretchier inside.

When you open it up, it has much bigger holes that are less uniform.

It smells like yeast and it smells like beer almost.

And it has a really nice crust.

Mm.

It's very toothsome.

It has that really satisfying, glutinous chew, you know?

Yeah.

That I really love.

I mean, this is.

This is a really serious baguette.

1994, We start having a contest to see who's making the very best traditional baguette in Paris.

And we judge, as always, a baguette on a rubric, a scale of one to four in five categories, which means your final potential points are 20.

Okay, but this is France, so you can't get 20.

20 Is for God.

Okay, 20 is for God.

19 Is for the president.

18 Is the highest mark anyone can get in France.

Exactly.

And so you're going to judge it basically.

Basically based on, so the crust.

So this exterior, is it golden?

Is it beautiful?

Is it, you know, is it even?

You never.

I mean, this.

I like it personally, with the sort of burniness on the outside of the.

Well done.

You wouldn't get submit that though.

But you wouldn't submit that also.

When you submit for the contest, you have to have three perfect slash marks.

Often you'll get one slash mark on a traditional baguette just on the day to day, because we're too busy for that.

We're going to do one.

So crust, crumb.

So the interior, is it.

Does it have that nice alveolization, the holes inside?

Alveolization, yes, alveol.

Like, like.

Like a honeycomb.

Hey, Siri, define al.

Alveolization.

I think it's a word.

I believe you.

I mean, now I want to look.

It up, but.

So you have these nice big holes.

You have like that almost creamy kind of lactic crumb smell.

The smell.

Taste.

And this is France aesthetic.

Is it beautiful?

It is beautiful.

I think so.

It's beautiful.

So you'll also notice when you're inspecting it for.

And this, I. I'm going to not turn them upside down because I would get in big trouble with French people.

You don't put the bread upside down on the table.

But if you look on the bottom, you can see on our flaccid baguette, we have a really, really sort of samey texture.

Whereas on the bottom of our traditional baguette, you're going to be able to see the fold lines which you.

As someone who jumped on the great sourdough bread baking trend, I can see the fold here.

You know, that's something you need to do to help it stand out.

I never tried to make a baguette, and you know what?

I never will.

What's the point?

I can buy baguette.

So the ordinary baguette is also sometimes called a molded baguette because it's baked in a mold.

Okay.

Whereas a traditional baguette is free baked.

And that's why you need to be able to fold sort of the edges of the dough underneath to help it support itself.

It's not actually an easy bread to make.

No.

It doesn't make sense to fold dough this way.

One other thing that I think we're doing in a very French way is also the way you eat it.

You literally can socially, acceptably rip off chunks of baguette.

It is okay to use your hands and you leave your bread on the table.

Yes, you do.

We don't have bread plates.

We don't put our bread on our plates.

No.

And in France, this always shocks Americans because obviously we do have the best butter in the world.

We do not typically serve baguette or bread at all with butter at a restaurant.

You know, you will get it occasionally.

I see it at Michelin star restaurants when they have some really fancy butter and some really fancy bread and it's almost like its own course.

Yeah.

They call it the bread service.

Yeah.

Yes.

Don't fill up on the bread service, even though you want to.

I am telling you from experience, it's a bad idea.

Yeah.

So as an American, if you come to a French restaurant and you don't get bread until your main is served, they haven't forgotten about you.

They're bringing it to you when it's designed to be brought to you.

Because your bread, the fact that it's served with your food and sits on the table shows the fact that culturally, it's perceived as a utensil almost.

It's for sopping things up.

It's not for filling up on.

Right.

Although it's hard to have this.

I was about to put that in my mouth.

It's.

I know I shouldn't be eating it.

I mean, I'm really tempted to do it.

I have to admit that I am a. I know you're an almond mom about this, but I am a lover of shitty baguette.

Like, I won't buy it, but if somebody gives it to me or if I get it in a bread basket, I'm kind of thrilled.

Oh, no.

If I get crappy baguette at a restaurant, I'm judging them.

It depends on where we are.

If we're in the middle of nowhere.

And this again, is something like.

Even though we have this mythology around this being a traditional thing in the countryside, there is not as much possibility for great bakeries because the community with fewer people can't support it and they just need the cheap bread.

And so it is harder to get good bread in the countryside.

So if I'm in a restaurant on the countryside and they give me shitty bread, I will accept that.

But if I am anywhere near a city and you're giving me a basket of, like, you know, Styrofoam baguette, you're not good.

I don't like you, and I don't want anything to do with it.

I am judging a restaurant by the quality of its bread 100%.

And I think where we're seeing kind of the French are almost falling out of love with the baguette.

They're not eating as much bread anymore.

They're buying more of these sort of country loaves.

They're going back even further beyond the traditional baguette, back to the country loaves that they were eating back in the 19th century.

They're buying less bread, but they're buying better quality bread.

And actually, the biggest consumers of baguette in the world is Algeria.

That's wild.

That's interesting.

So, yeah, 48 million baguettes are consumed every day in Algeria.

Oh, my gosh.

Um, and in France, I think when we start to protect French foods as UNESCO Intangible World Heritage, it's a sign that they're kind of falling out of fashion.

I. I interviewed a really amazing French food journalist, Emmanuel Rubin, who made the excellent point that you don't protect something that you're not afraid is endangered.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

And I think that's a sign that.

That, you know, maybe it's not endangered, but it's definitely no longer as banal, as omnipresent as it might have been in the past.

That's really interesting.

And it is true that I do not buy baguettes very frequently.

If I buy bread for our home, it is more often than not, not a baguette.

Yeah.

And, I mean, there was a.

There was an ad campaign in France a few years ago that was kind of similar in vibes to, like, the Got Milk?

Campaign.

And it was, hey, did you pick up the bread?

Because this idea was that on your, you know, you.

The typical French person for years would have gone to the bakery twice a day, every single day, once first thing in the morning and once on the way home from work to make sure that there was bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And most French people don't eat that way anymore.

Bread is more of a special occasion luxury, almost like our fantasy breads than it.

Than it used to be when it was sort of omnipresent.

Well, this has been so interesting, and I think we are probably gonna touch upon bread in many different ways, but this was a very cool way to introduce exactly what we are about as the real fishwives, which is taking something that you thought you understood and actually.

Making a big mess out of it.

Making a big mess out of it.

Making a big mess out of it.

And leaving you with some pretty interesting factoids.

I don't hate that word.

I'm not gonna.

I'm leaving you with some pretty interesting crumbs.

Oh, well done.

We are the real fishwives of Paris.

And so are you.

Join us for our next episode and we'll see you real soon.

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