Editor’s note: Watch the CNN Original Series “Tony Shalhoub Breaking Bread.” Enjoy a mouth-watering journey around the world where bread acts as a conduit to different cuisines and cultures. The series airs Sundays at 9pm ET/PT on CNN.
Paris
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When baguettes were officially added to UNESCO’s cultural heritage list in Paris in 2022, a photo shoot in which a French delegation triumphantly waved the crispy bread in the air made headlines around the world.
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the baguette on social media as “250 grams of magic and perfection in our daily lives,” along with an iconic vintage black-and-white Willy Ronis photo of a jubilant French boy captured on a run with a long baguette tucked under his tiny arm.
But UNESCO’s victory, which placed French bread-making craftsmanship and baguette culture on the list of intangible cultural heritage, appears to have done little to reverse France’s ongoing decline in bread consumption, prompting headlines such as “Will bread disappear from French tables?” In French food media.
Historically, in the years after World War II, the French ate an average of 25 ounces of bread per person per day. By 2015, that number had plummeted to 4 oz., according to the Federation of Bakery Entrepreneurs. Today, that number has dropped again to 3.5 ounces, which is the equivalent of just under half a baguette per day.
In the 2023 consumer survey published by the National Federation of French Bread and Pastry Shops (CNBPF), more than a third (36%) of 1,000 respondents said they had reduced their bread consumption over the past five years.
Industry experts say the trend is being driven by changing eating habits, a new generation of “neo-bakers” who are removing baguettes from shelves altogether, and the growing popularity of baguette rivals, American processed white bread.
“One of the threats is the fact that young people are losing the habit of buying baguettes every day,” says CNBPF president Dominique Enracht.
The daily trip to the local bakery to buy a baguette (which used to be as automatic and ceremonial as brushing your teeth, according to Anracht) has become less frequent.
But this is especially true for younger generations, who are cooking less at home and eating out more.
“Before, even students would cook for themselves. There were no snacks, no ‘world food’, no burgers, kebabs or sushi. But more and more young people are turning to fast food,” he says.
Traditionally, baguettes are eaten for breakfast as open-faced tartines, slathered with butter and jam or chocolate-hazelnut spread. For lunch, guests can enjoy to-go baguette sandwiches filled with ham, tuna, chicken, and cheese. And for dinner, it’s an essential accompaniment to traditional, brash French dishes such as veal stew and beef bourguignon. For this dish, mop up any remaining sauce on the plate with a piece of bread. This gesture has its own verb called “saucer.”
“We find that young people are very happy to be able to eat traditional baguettes when visiting their parents on the weekends, which is a blessing. But life has become more modern and there are different options for eating out without bread,” says Enracht.
There has been another notable change in recent years that has changed the relationship between France and bread. It is the rise of “neo-boulangerie” or neo-bakery. This new generation bakes bread with ancient grains and organic flours, sells aromatic long-fermented sourdough breads, and makes little, if any, baguettes.
Rennes’ Seize Heures Trente Pâtisserie-Boulangerie is one of several bakeries across France that made headlines this year for having the audacity to not sell baguettes.
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When pastry chef and owner Marion Jewell expanded her pastry shop into a bakery two years ago, she made a conscious decision not to offer baguettes. For Juher, it’s an energy-intensive product with little nutritional value and a short shelf life, leading to one of her biggest complaints: excessive food waste.
Instead, large sourdough and whole-wheat breads made with local organic flour are sold by weight. In addition to staying fresh longer, the bread, which weighs up to 7 pounds and is feeding more families, is easier to digest and tastes better thanks to longer fermentation times that break down gluten, she added.
But for some, the idea of a French bakery without baguettes was a hard sell. Juher recalls one man who became furious when he was told he wasn’t making anything. She had to ask him to leave.
“We really needed to educate our customers to understand our approach,” Juher told CNN. “It’s true that the French expect a bakery to have baguettes. And the fact that we declared ourselves a bakery and didn’t have baguettes was unthinkable to them.”
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Another entrepreneur who shares Jewel’s spirit is artisan pastry chef and boulanger Benoît Castel. He is said to be one of the pioneers of the modern bread movement when he created rustic sourdough bread as his signature product in 2012.
Instead of baguettes, his caramelized, aromatic pain du coin (a pun on both local bread and quince bread, after the fruit-based sourdough starter from which the bread is made) is the top seller at his three Parisian bakeries.
“From the beginning, we wanted to create a more traditional, larger loaf of bread, like what was made in the past,” Castel says.
That’s because, as Castel points out, baguettes first emerged in the 20th century as an alternative to traditional bread made once a week. Unlike pain de garde (which means “bread that lasts for a long time”), which requires more time and effort, baguettes, which require a shorter baking time, became popular with the Parisian bourgeoisie, who soon enjoyed freshly baked white bread every day.
But while pain de garde can be eaten all week, baguettes spoil quickly, creating a huge amount of waste in French households.
To solve this problem in his bakery, Castel created Bread Die et de Dumain (Bread of Yesterday and Tomorrow) made from old, unsold inventory. Other than the darker toast color of the bread, the taste of zero-waste bread is almost indistinguishable from freshly baked bread.
For Castel, the popularity of gut-friendly organic sourdough and zero-waste bakeries reflects exciting times. French people may be eating less bread, but they’re eating better, he says.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had bread as good as it is now. We’re eating very good bread in Paris today.”
But baker Eric Kaiser, who built a small empire of 370 bakeries around the world on the back of traditional baguettes made with liquid sourdough starter, has an interesting point about the specialty breads that are taking the capital by storm.
“The problem is that bread is much more expensive. Not everyone can afford it,” he says.
For reference, a simple baguette that can be baked from frozen with additives costs about 1 euro. A traditional baguette from an upper class artisan (by law, it can only be made fresh with flour, water, salt and yeast, such as yeast, sourdough starter or a combination of both) costs around 1.30 euros. In contrast, a 500g loaf of specialty bread, often sold by weight, can sell for up to €7.
“The purpose of baguettes is to feed a lot of people. They’re more of an elitist bakery. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but it’s just that they cater to a kind of middle-class clientele,” Kaiser says.
Despite the decline in bread consumption, Kaiser says he’s not worried about bread’s demise. Even when the results of another consumer poll by the Federation of Bakery Entrepreneurs found that 86% of French people admitted to eating sliced industrial white bread in supermarkets.
“Some older people like this because it’s kinder to their teeth, but there are also younger people who just buy a loaf of bread and put it in the fridge for a week and live like Americans. It’s practical,” admits Anracht.
Still, Kaiser scoffs at the idea that baguettes are actually in danger.
“It’s something that never happens in a million years. People love it.”
Kaiser points out that baguette sandwiches are a relatively new product that became popular in the late 1990s and early 2020s, and that sales of baguettes alone have rebounded from a decline.
In fact, Kaiser is so confident in his star product that last year he opened a concept store and a “Baguette Bar” simply called Baguette. In Paris with co-founder Deborah Magnan. In addition to the 3-foot-long sandwiches, fuchsia-pink baguette loaves dyed with beets and studded with cranberries and startlingly green pistachio and white chocolate loaves line the store’s windows.
“It’s a simple idea, but our French customers say, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?'” Magnan says.
For Enract, neo-bakers and creative bakeries such as Müchel, Castel and Kaiser have always pushed French baking culture forward.
“We have to adapt. Bakeries have always experienced crises, but we have always reinvented ourselves.”
