A while ago, on a Facebook group called ‘Married to a French man’, someone had the audacity to pit French bread against its English counterpart: “OK ... let's take a vote ... which is better: English bread or French bread?”
Seriously? I hope she does not discuss this over the breakfast table with her French husband. Divorce will soon be on the way.
She goes on: “French bread: becomes inedible within 24 hours, is expensive... English bread is cheap!”
Well, if that is the only thing going for it, what is this competition all about? Cost or flavour?
The reason that French bread goes off after a day is because it has no preservatives in it. At least, it did not for a long long time. As in, for centuries. But a change has been happening over the past few years.
Read more: Meet the French baker using solar power to make bread
Cheap supermarket bread
It is the invasion of French supermarkets with what once I thought unique only to Australian, British and American culture: plastic packaged bread. Ughh. I call it the plastification of French bread. The French sadly seem to be gorging themselves on these processed breads and abandoning the sacré artisan boulangerie.
French bakery bread – let’s say a baguette – will typically have four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt, dictated by the French Bread Law (décret pain) of 1993. The pain de tradition française in the form of a baguette is Unesco recognised for its “artisanal know-how and culture”.
Pain de mie sandwich bread, on the other hand, is not Unesco lauded, and has multiple ingredients, including many yucky ones – the usual preservatives, E282, E200, emulsifiers, E471, and added flavours.
Being a bit cheeky, I replied to the Facebook comment: “Oh do the English have bread? I thought they were plastic slices in a plastic packet ... as in Australia (the mass market). Come on!!! Let's call bread, bread and plastic, plastic.”
Because for me, processed bread is as plastic as its wrapping. Having to witness the French gradually go from a nation of bakery devotees to supermarket goers for their bread, well, quelle horreur!
Read more: How to spot mass-produced pastries in a French bakery
Cost of living crisis to blame
Recent predictions of ‘the death of sliced white bread’ in Britain appear premature. British Baker says the rising cost of living is ‘fuelling a surge in demand for sliced white loaves’, at the expense of what I call real bread.
The same cost concerns appear to be driving sales of it in France too – but at the expense of quality says Jordan Ayrton, a young boulanger in Tarn-et-Garonne who made headlines a few years ago for his impassioned coup de gueule against the French for abandoning artisan bakeries in favour of supermarket baguettes.
"Why do you think their baguettes cost 35 cents? They are filled with improvers, it's shoddy work. Whereas at an artisan baker, the baguettes are made with love and with real flour,” he railed on social media.
The French bakers’ and millers’ lobby, the Observatoire du Pain, started getting concerned much earlier. In 2013, noticing French people were turning their backs on the boulangerie in favour of fast food … and fast bread, it launched a campaign.
Billboards sporting the slogan “Coucou, tu as pris le pain?” (Hey there, have you got the bread?), were plastered around the country. It does not seem to have been successful.
One of my favourite bakers in France, Pierre Naegel from Maison Naegel in Strasbourg, broke down and cried during an interview about the future of the French Boulangerie-Patisserie as an institution.
Boulangerie tradition
He feels they are creeping slowly towards the brink of extinction – a generational and commercial dead-end – taking with it centuries of savoir-faire.
“One of the reasons for that”, he explained, “is the lack of commitment to the trade. The other, the declining demand for quality bread.”
Maison Naegel is still going strong, but I bet the increasing plastification of French bread still brings tears to Pierre’s eyes. Every year in France since 2013, more than 1,200 of 32,000 bakeries have closed their doors as the industrial breads take over, particularly in grandes surfaces such as Leclerc and Carrefour.
The latter unabashedly marks the aisle with the label ‘Pain Industriel’.
Meanwhile at Auchan as at other supermarkets, the range is now so big it extends through sections marked Pain de Mie, Spécialités, Grandes Tranches, Pains Toast et Pains Burger and Apéritif. After two and a half decades in France, coming from humble bready beginnings in Australia.
French bread market
One recent study by the Fédération des Entreprises de Boulangerie Pâtisserie gives me hope. Unlike in England, the crise sanitaire (Covid), it says, has prompted another revolution – back towards the local bakery.
The French still want quality bread, it claims, and are picky about knowing things most people would not think of, such as “the origin of the flour”.
Read more: Comment: Croissant changes must not lose authenticity of great French pastry
On the other hand, the quantity of bread the French eat is in decline, and “proximity” reigns over quality. While many critics are pointing out the poor quality of pre-packaged breads, the invasion continues.
In 2017, a study on the French bread market found 95% of consumers bought their bread from artisan bakeries, far ahead of bakery chains, hypermarkets and “hot outlet chains”. Today, that has dropped to 60%, compared to 9% in supermarkets and 31% at ready-to-go bakery outlets or terminaux de cuisson. Often, the latter are located in supermarkets.
I guess it depends which is closer, the supermarket or the artisan bakery. Sadly, the supermarché seems to be winning out, as French consumers increasingly opt for prêt-à-porter plastic breads de proximité.
