If I’m totally honest, I wasn’t particularly fussed about
what living in France with French bread on my doorstep every day meant when I
first moved here. To my utter shame, I spent most of my first term buying sliced
bread; walking past the beautiful “Pavé Nature”, baguettes and similarly
delicious bread on offer that had just been taken from the oven, heading
instead for Harry’s American Sandwich Pain de Mie (wholewheat, I’m not an
animal). That surely is grounds to chuck me out of the country. Like all sorts
of things about life down here – beautiful weather, going for dinner at 10pm, sitting
at a café that’s spilling out onto the streets – I’ve only really started
appreciating French bread in the past few months. For a mere 29 cents, you can
buy a demi baguette; and okay, if you leave it overnight it’ll be rock-solid
and will cover your floor with breadcrumbs if you try to slice it – but surely
that’s just further incentive to make sure you eat all of that baguette in one
day. Challenge accepted. It is more expensive to buy a demi-baguette every day
or a fresh loaf every week than it is to buy sliced bread – but there is a
massive difference, and you know what? I’m willing to pay that little bit more
every day for the two months I’ve got here.
Maybe it’s because it’s because we non-French have this
stereotypical image of a French person in a striped Breton top with a silly
moustache carrying a baguette under their arm – but bread seems to be as much a
part of the way of life here as passive smoking and striking. Coming back from
the supermarket on the tram, I heard two ladies grumbling about how the price
of a baguette had gone up three cents since last week, whilst a guy in his
twenties ripped massive chunks of bread from the baguette in his shopping bag
and ate, head nodding in time to the music he was listening to. Any given
shopping trolley will contain at least one baguette, and even the cheapest
restaurant will bring you a basket of bread that will be refilled whenever it
looks like it’s running low absolutely free of charge. The idea that you might
have to ask for bread in a restaurant– and then pay for it – is utterly
horrifying to a French person. For added shock, I suggest you also add that
very few places will bring a bottle of water to your table, and only
reluctantly after trying to sell you a very expensive bottle of mineral water.
No matter how you slice it (oh I’m so funny), bread is
incredibly important to the French, and why on earth shouldn’t it be? Got some
sauce left on your plate? Mop it up with your bread. Can’t be bothered to wash
your only knife? Use your bread to push it onto your fork. Fingers a bit greasy
from the olive oil on your salad dressing? Bread napkin. Need to soak up some
of your Merlot? Bread. Just want to eat bread? Bread. Good luck being gluten-intolerant down here, folks.
What I’m really trying to say is – the bread in France is
amazing in a way that I cannot fully explain; and the way it is entrenched in French culture only serves to ensure that
it stays that way. And thank goodness for that. Forget Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – the French motto should be Vive les boulangères et vive le pain.
