In Paris, a kerfuffle. Late last month, under pressure from the health ministry, the salt content in the city’s baguettes was cut from 1.5g per 100g of bread to 1.4g. It seems that the morning baguette currently accounts for 18% of the average French adult’s salt intake of 7.7g a day, which is somewhat distant from the World Health Organization’s recommended 5g, and so – zut, alors! – things had to change. Needless to say, some people are unhappy about this. Bakers, who have already cut the salt content of their baguettes (by 20% since 2015), believe the taste of the bread may suffer, and so do some customers. The word “insipid” has been uttered.
I love it. French tiffs about food are so much more chic than British ones, and never more so than now. In the land of Chanel and anchoïade, people are worrying about blandness and possibly inappreciable differences in the taste of a traditional product. Meanwhile, we’re busy trying to persuade ourselves that ultra-processed food really isn’t as bad for us as we were told it was only last month (the average daily intake of salt in the UK, incidentally, is 8.1g). I find myself thinking back to 2020, when Bernard Matthews announced it was reviving the Turkey Twizzler, a decision it celebrated by placing a gargantuan statue of one on a plinth outside its Norfolk HQ. Eat your heart out Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel and Niki de Saint Phalle, as I may have muttered at the time. (The Twizzler has, it seems, since disappeared once again. But with Halloween ahead, why not try the company’s turkey Spooky Shapes instead?)
Still, I perfectly understand why Parisians may be anxious. Baguettes are heaven, and must be protected; and no, those sold in British supermarkets, with crusts the colour of cornflakes and soggy insides, are not right at all. The French baguette is at once sweet and salty, the former the result – I believe – of the soft (low-protein) European wheat from which the flour is milled (this also absorbs less water, which means the loaf is drier and rises less). Its gorgeously resistant crust and open crumb, with finger-sized holes, makes it so wonderful to eat, these contrasting textures requiring nothing else in the devouring, not even a knife. Except, of course, I often put butter on mine.
When I was a child, I imagined that the best thing about being an adult would be going to bed whenever I liked, but in fact, it’s breaking off both ends of a baguette and buttering and eating them, and not being told off when someone later finds the middle folded inside the bread bin.
I like their unlikely portability, too: the way they poke out of your bag as you swing it over your shoulder, nonchalantly. Female readers of a certain age will recall Nicole, once the star of the ads for the Renault Clio, and feel just a little bit like her. People complain they go stale quickly, and I suppose this is true. But sliced thinly and toasted, they continue to be delicious, and they’re just the thing for canapes in the form of crostini. Again, it’s a question of textures. You want to load each crisp slice with something soft and a bit damp: some sauteed chicken livers, say, or the crushed peas with parmesan and roasted garlic recipe from Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat. In our house we are only two, so a baguette, though more expensive per square mile than some other loaves, lasts us for the weekend sans guests. It’s also the only bread that will, in my opinion, do for a fondue.
The baguette isn’t the only French bread of course, for all that since 2022 it has had Unesco world heritage status – and it’s interesting to read in The Oxford Companion to Food that it’s a relative newcomer historically, introduced in Paris in its longest format in the 19th century, and in the provinces in the 20th (at which point, some city types came over all snobby about it, and started to demand more rustic country breads). I love croissants and brioches, too, and especially fougasse, which is focaccia by any other name, and in the old days was so rich and cakey it escaped a tax on bread. But in the end, une journée sans baguette est vraiment une mauvaise journée. The stick rules.
