Opinion
The humble French item that deserves its world heritage status
Lee Tulloch
Travel columnistNow that it’s European summer and so many people are once again in Paris, I’d like to sing the praises of one of the things I love most about that city.
Bread.
Nothing culinary anywhere beats the joy of sitting in the sun outside a cafe in Paris, digging into crusty, chewy chunks of baguette smeared with lashings of salty butter. Not even a multi-Michelin-starred meal where a chef does inventive things with root vegetables. Or even (a close second) a slippery, warm crepe smothered in apricot jam, straight off the hotplate.
The French baguette deserves its world heritage status with UNESCO.Credit: iStock
I don’t even care for the ham and cheese that typically go with it, or even the French “hot dog” made with melted Emmentaler. Sometimes I’ll order a tartine, which is a slice of toasted baguette with jam. It’s the bread I want.
The pleasure is in the crunch, the dense chew, the almost primitive way it requires good teeth to tear it apart. Baguette also usually happens to be the cheapest thing on the menu, which proves that all culinary experiences in Paris don’t have to cost an arm and a leg, or couter les yeux de la tete, as they say.
And now the baguette has been rightly elevated to star status.
Last year, UNESCO placed the baton-sized bread on its list of things that have “intangible cultural heritage”.
Also elevated to the list last year were the “knowledge of the light rum masters, Cuba”, the Romanian art of the traditional blouse with embroidery on the shoulder, and aldeha’a, the oral traditions of calling camel flocks in Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. It’s in interesting company.
The UNESCO world heritage list includes a set of cultural and natural sites “presenting an exceptional interest for the common heritage of mankind”.
It also includes “traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants”, such as social practices, rituals, festive events and the knowledge and skills that produce traditional crafts.
The baguette seems such a humble thing to have acquired UNESCO status. But if you’ve ever tried to bake one, you’d have a lot of respect for it. It involves so many chemical processes, including precise temperatures and humidity, it would make Dr Frankenstein’s hair curl.
Its distinctive baton shape has an uncertain history. I prefer the story, probably apocryphal, that Napoleon I’s bakers made the bread this way to make it more easily transportable in the pockets of his soldiers’ coats. Or that the tearable loaves were created for workers on the Paris Metro to stop them bringing knives, which they’d use in fights.
The French are fiercely protective of the art of baking. The daily visit to the boulangerie for a fresh loaf is a morning ritual over there. The bread rarely makes it home intact – the French don’t like to eat on the street, but they can’t resist a few nibbles of the loaf’s end.
In 1993 they even passed a law that regulates how a baguette de tradition (traditional baguette) is created. The baguettes must be made on the premises of the boulangerie, from start to finish. They can contain only four ingredients — wheat flour, yeast, salt and water.
Don’t mention sourdough to them. French bread is made with a starter culture called levain, which is sweet, not sour.
I love the idea of a bread law. Down in Australia, we are obviously careless about our food icons because we don’t think it necessary to legislate a meat pie or lamington. But I’ve heard of a pina colada lamington, so perhaps we should.
Further in line with the French love of bureaucracy, bakers in France need to be registered. The French National Confederation of Bakery has about 35,000 establishments on its register, which means roughly one bakery for 1800 inhabitants, producing more than six billion baguettes a year.
Paris has run a competition for the best baguette since 1994, with a jury made up of professionals, journalists and six Parisians chosen by lot. The winner gets the opportunity to supply the Elysee Palace for one year.
To be entered in the competition a baguette must measure between 55 and 70 centimetres, weigh from 250 to 300 grams, and have 18 grams salt per kilogram of flour. It’s that precise.
The 2023 winner of the competition is boulangere Tharshan Selvarajah, of “Levain des Pyrenees” in the 20th arrondissement, if you’re there and want to see what the fuss is for yourself.
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