I feel their pain. There is nothing like the real thing, baby!

Having had pastries and bread in pre-industrialization France and Switzerland, and comparing these delights to the ersatz, spongy, soggy crap that passes for "baked good"s in the English-speaking countries, I think this would merit full scale national riots, not just a few burned out Citroëns in Paris.

True French bread has the following ingredients: flour, salt, water, yeast. It turns into concrete a few hours after baking, but while it is fresh, it is real bread, with a crust and a mie* so tasty you can eat it without butter but you should add a quarter of pound of butter any way.

*Mie is the French word for the soft part of the bread. The fact that the French have a word for this and the English don't just goes to show you what is wrong with industrialized bread--it is all soft part. It has no creal crust or mie.

God save France (and Europe's bread) from Anglo-American industrialization. In Europe you have an aisle of fresh bread and a corner somewhere with potato chips and other junk food. In North America (and the UK) you have an aisle of junk food and maybe some real bread hidden away in a corner of the store somewhere, going stale because nobody knows or cares that it is there.

My father insisted on having home-baked bread. Sometimes they use one of those bread-makers now, but real bread is always an option in Mother Goose's house. Her home bread is almost identical to the traditional bread made in the Valais region of Switzerland--a good solid bread that is spongy but makes good crumbs, with a real golden-brown crust on it--perfect for toast or sandwiches.

I don't eat as much bread as I should but the lumpy, yeasty, wet stuff that passes for a baguette at the local supermarket is nowhere near as good as the crusty stuff that you get at the local bakeries, and even that isn't quite as good as the real baguettes of France, or the ryes and pumpernickels of Germany and Switzerland.

If you want to eat right, you have to be prepared to fight yourself, laziness, stupidity and corporations. Only competent well-remunerated craftsmen and artisans make the real thing. Everything else is ersatz and poison for the body and soul.

The French may fail in many ways, but this is one thing they have always gotten right. They've used the power of government for good, not for evil, when it comes to the purity, safety, and quality of food.

brantgoose: [lots of French stuff]

Hey, take your Frenchy Frenchness back to Frenchland and Frenchout all you want, you Frenchy Frechman.

/would kill for a traditional croissant right now

Coming on a Bicycle: Haters gonna hate, but once upon a time I found myself, one sunny July morning, sitting with my woman out on the terrace of a boulangerie somewhere on the corner of Rue St Antoine and where Place des Vosges begins and I ordered myself a soupbowl full of chocolate milk and a croissant, and just as I was about to bite that motherfarker I heard a giant sonic boom and three jets with red, white and blue in their exhausts soared over. I'd forgotten that it was the 14th. But anyway, that croissant was something special.

Could that place have been Ma Bourgogne? It's the only café I remember on the square.

/lived in the 4th