A Slice of France, the Baguette Is Granted World
Heritage Status
More than six billion baguettes are sold every year in
France. But the bread is under threat, with bakeries vanishing in rural areas.
By
Catherine Porter and Constant Méheut
Nov. 30,
2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/world/europe/france-baguette-unesco.html
PARIS — It
is more French than, perhaps, the Eiffel Tower or the Seine. It is carried home
by millions each day under arms or strapped to the back of bicycles. It is the
baguette, the bread that has set the pace for life in France for decades and
has become an essential part of French identity.
On
Wednesday, UNESCO, the United Nations heritage agency, named the baguette
something worthy of humanity’s preservation, adding it to its exalted
“intangible cultural heritage” list.
The
decision captured more than the craft knowledge of making bread — it also
honored a way of life that the thin crusty loaf has long symbolized and that
recent economic upheavals have put under threat. UNESCO’s choice came as
boulangeries in rural areas are vanishing, hammered by economic forces like the
slow hollowing out of France’s villages, and as the economic crisis gripping
Europe has pushed the baguette’s price higher than ever.
“It’s a
good news in a complicated environment,” said Dominique Anract, the president
of the National Federation of French Bakeries and Patisseries, who led the
effort to get the baguette on the UNESCO heritage list.
“When a
baby cuts his teeth, his parents give him a stump of baguette to chew off,” Mr.
Anract added. “When a child grows up, the first errand he runs on his own is to
buy a baguette at the bakery.”
A French
delegation celebrated the announcement, delivered on Wednesday in Rabat,
Morocco, in classic French style — by waving baguettes and trading “la bise,”
the traditional two kisses, one for each cheek.
President
Emmanuel Macron of France reacted to the news by describing the baguette on
Twitter as “250 grams of magic and perfection in our daily lives.” He attached
a famous photo by the French photographer Willy Ronis of a beaming boy running
with a baguette, almost as tall as he is, tucked under his arm.
Though just
one of many breads that can be found in a typical boulangerie, the baguette is
by far the most popular in France. More than six billion are sold every year in
the country, according to the federation, for an average price of about 1 euro.
(Until 1986, it had a fixed price.)
The
baguette has set the pace for French life for as long as anyone can remember,
from the smell of baking bread wafting through neighborhoods at dawn to people
munching on the pointy nub of a hot “tradition” on their commute home at the
end of the day.
The
baguette’s creation is the source of many urban legends: Napoleon’s bakers
supposedly created it as a lighter and more portable loaf for the troops;
Parisian bakers were said to have made it a rippable consistency to stop knife
fights between factions building the city’s subway system (who could rip the
bread apart with their bare hands and did not need knives to cut it).
In truth,
historians say, the bread developed gradually — elongated loaves were already
being produced by French bakers in 1600. Originally considered a bread for
better-off Parisians who could afford to buy a product that went stale quickly,
unlike the peasant’s heavy, round miche that could last a week — the baguette
became a staple in the French countryside only after World War II, said Bruno
Laurioux, a French historian specializing in medieval food.
But it was
not the French who initially tied the baguette to French identity.
“The first
to talk about how the French were eating baguettes — this very strange and
different bread — were tourists at the beginning of the 20th century who came
to Paris,” said Mr. Laurioux, who led the academic committee overseeing the
baguette’s pitch to UNESCO. “It was an outsiders’ view that tied the French
identity to the baguette.”
Since then,
the French have embraced it, hosting an annual competition outside the
Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris to judge the best baguette creator in the
country. The winner, announced with flourish, wins not just prestige, but also
a yearlong contract to serve the Élysée Palace, where the president resides and
works.
The
baguette’s ingredients are limited to four: flour, water, salt and yeast. But
specialty yeasts were developed to inspire the bread’s long fermentation stage;
special knives are used to score its surface, creating the trademark golden
color; and long-handled wooden paddles are deployed to gently remove the bread
from the ovens. The baguette is eaten fresh, so most boulangeries make more
than one batch a day.
The
American-French historian Steven Kaplan, perhaps the baguette’s most dedicated
and famous chronicler, stunned the talk-show host Conan O’Brien on “The Late
Show” in 2007 when he rhapsodized about the sensual experience of touching and
eating a good baguette, with its “appealing line,” “geyser of aromas” and air
pockets, and the “little sites of memories” that “testify to a sensuality.”
In
comparison, he described Wonder Bread as “tasteless,” “insipid,” “charged with
chemicals” and “without any interest.”
France
submitted more than 200 endorsements for the baguette’s UNESCO bid, including
letters from bakers and children’s drawings. One testimonial poem by Cécile
Piot, a baker, read: “I am here / Warm, light, magical / Under your arm or in
your basket / Let me give the rhythm / To your day of idleness or work.”
The list of
fellow winners reads like a cultural tour of the world, including mansaf, the
traditional dish of mutton and rice from Jordan; winter bear festivals in
Pyrenean villages; and Kun Lbokator, traditional martial arts in Cambodia.
With the
baguette’s new status, the French government said it planned to create a
Bakehouse Open Day to “enhance the prestige of the artisanal know-how required
for the production of baguettes” and support new scholarships and training
programs for bakers.
Still, the
baguette is under threat, with the country losing 400 artisanal bakeries a year
since 1970 — a decline that is especially significant in France’s rural areas,
where supermarkets and chains have overtaken traditional mom-and-pop bakeries.
To make
matters worse — and in a sting to French pride — sales of hamburgers since 2017
have exceeded those of jambon-beurre, sandwiches made with ham on a buttered
baguette.
Some
Parisian bakers expressed skepticism that the news on Wednesday would do much
to alleviate their most pressing fear that the high costs of wheat and flour
would continue to rise because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, forcing them to
raise the price of the beloved bread sticks even further.
“This
UNESCO recognition is not what will help us get through the winter,” said
Pascale Giuseppi, who was behind the counter of her bakery near the
Champs-Élysées, serving a lunch rush for baguette sandwiches. “We still have
bigger bills to pay.”
Nearby,
another baker, Jean-Luc Aussant, said he was “not really in the mood to
celebrate anything” and, brushing flour from his fingers, grumbled that the
recognition would change “nothing.”
“Now that I
think about it,” he added, “I might use this as an excuse to increase the price
of my baguette.”
Tom Nouvian
contributed reporting.
Catherine
Porter is an international correspondent based in Paris. She was previously The
Times’s Canada bureau chief. She is the author of “A Girl Named Lovely.”
@porterthereport
Constant
Méheut reports from France. He joined the Paris bureau in January 2020. @ConstantMeheut
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