Don’t you just love the smell and taste of freshly baked bread? The aroma in the air, the crust crumbling and crackling as you rip apart a bread roll and smother it in layers of soft butter…. Makes me hungry at the thought.
It seems that no one likes it better than the French. So much so in fact that it was basically law that the town bakers couldn’t go on holidays until the government had assigned them the days or weeks they could take a break. They couldn’t just close at a whim which is a surprise to me. The bakers in France had to stick to a roster of sorts.
The French apparently love their fresh bread and baguette so much that a baker in Paris is basically considered an essential service. So why the crisis?
Well, for the first time since the French revolution, the French Government lifted the requirement that a artisanal baker remain open over the slow summer months so the locals could be assured of their daily fresh bread supply.
But, no sooner had the reformed labour laws taken place, any artisan baker worth his salt decided to close shop and have a holiday, obviously taking advantage of the off-season fares and holidays on offer.
The crisis escalated quickly when the locals couldn’t find a decent baguette anywhere in Paris.
www.ft.com quotes Rémi Héluin, the founder of Painrisien, a blog about Parisian bakeries. “Parisians are in a grotesque situation, many of the artisanal bakers have decided to close at the same time, and there has been a total lack of co-ordination.”
Aude Debout, a 30-year-old designer who lives to the east of Paris told www.ft.com. “…. I find myself buying more sliced bread from the supermarket — and that’s not even really bread.”
So I guess the lesson here is to take your own baguette if you are heading to Paris in the summer months, or be content with supermarket bread, which isn’t really bread, according to the experts.
It sounds like a #1stworldproblem to me. Perhaps someone should introduce them to the English muffin. That should go down a treat.
(source: http://tinyurl.com/oayhn6o)