Bread: the Center of French Culture

Bread takes the center stage of any meal in France. It is also considered sacred. Bread is pretty inexpensive and accessible to everyone. As a result, I wondered how and why bread played such a key role in the lives of the French people.

History
On Nov 15, 1793, a government decree (after the French Revolution 1789), was made that white bread had been available not only to nobles and aristocrats but to all the people.  In a sense, bread was a great equalizer--or at least a symbol of equality, one of the three tenets of the Revolution. 


In 1804 Napoleon I declared standard sizes and weights for bread through the Civil Code.

After World War II, bakers in France created the baguette. These measure 70 cm at a weight of 250 grams.  The flûte weighs 400 grams, and it can come in long or short shapes.

Boulangeries (bakeries) are common stores in every French city and village. They are highly prized for their fresh-daily bread. However, there are some common practices to buying bread. For example, you must first choose the type of bread that you want. Basically, there is a loaf of bread (un pain), the long stick of bread (baguette), and a long fatter stick of bread (flûte). If you buy a loaf, you can have it sliced or not. The baguette and flûte can be cut in half, if that's all you want.

Then you must decide how you want your bread to have been baked:
     bien cuite is brown, crusty bread
     pas trop cuite is lighter and less crusty 

It is important to have more than enough bread for your meal rather than not enough. If, for example, you are planning for a big dinner, you generally buy one baguette for three people, according to Géraldine Lepere of "Comme Une Française," a popular French-English language learning website. 

It is an interesting sight in France that upon leaving the boulangerie (or the grocery store that bakes its own bread), you will commonly see French people break off the end of a baguette or flûte and eat it. Sometimes they do this waiting at the check-out line. This is certainly an irresistable thing for me to do, too; the bread is so inviting, so fresh, so crusty. The French seem to normalize this behavior by giving this end piece a name: quignon (hunk).


 

 

Bread Etiquette
But there is much more to bread than just its weight, size, and accessibility. The French have devised a certain etiquette for bread that people practice in order to show their respect for bread, as Géraldine explains.

For the table, the baguette is meant to be sliced with un couteau à pain (a bread knife) or it can be broken by hand. The French tend to cut the slices small so that people may decide the quantity of bread they want to consume without getting too big a piece. 

Bread is usually served in a little straw basket (une corbeille à pain) and placed on the dinner table. If you don't cut the bread and instead serve it as a whole on a cutting board, it should be placed so that its top is showing. Never lay the bread on its flat bottom. This is considered bad luck or bad form.

Baguettes are never eaten as sandwiches. They are either eaten with the meal and/or with the cheese course. After a meal, it is permissible to sop up the sauce on your plate with your bread, but as my French friends tell me, you would never do this if you were having dinner with French President Macron.

At the table there is no bread plate and no butter offered. People take a piece of bread from the little basket and place it to the side of their plate on the tablecloth--never on the plate. I was once with some French people, and placed a piece of bread on my friend's plate (my first gaffe). She became noticeably nervous and took the bread off her plate to place it next to her plate.

To eat the bread, you break a piece off of the slice with your hands. The piece should fit entirely in your mouth without a struggle. You never bite from the slice! That's gauche. 

If someone at the table asks for bread, give him or her the entire bread basket--never a piece of bread. 

Unlike in American restaurants where we eat bread while we await our meal, in France, bread is considered a side dish to be taken with the meal. As good as the bread is, however, be mindful that you don't eat too much and then can't eat the rest of your meal.  

 

 UNESCO designation

 So important is the baguette to France that UNESCO designated it to the list of

cultural treasures known as "intangible heritage" in January 2022. The designation aims to protect traditions and skills so they are not lost over time. In France, about 20,000 traditional bakeries since the 1970s have been lost to industrialization.   Click here for a news report on the UNESCO status of the baguette -- as well as tips on how to make one and what to look for in the finished product.  

French expressions about bread
Bread is also celebrated through the French language. Here is a sampling listed on ThoughtCo:

Pain grillé – Toast

Bon comme (du) bon pain – Good like good bread (extremely good)

Long comme un jour sans pain (a long day without bread) – Interminable

Avoir du pain sur la planche – (to have bread on the board) To have a lot of work to do

Avoir peur de manquer de pain – (to have a fear about missing bread) To be worried about the future

Enlever à quelqu'un le pain de la bouche – (to take bread out of someone's mouth) To deprive someone of something

Être à l'eau et au pain sec – (to be like water and dry bread) To be bankrupt; to be given only bread and water

Être bon comme le pain – To be extremely good like bread

Faire de quelque chose son pain quotidien – (to do something like daily bread) To make something a habit

Ne pas manger de ce pain-là (not to each that bread there) – To avoid profiting from a sticky or illegal situation

Ne pas vivre que de pain – (not to live like bread) To not be materialistic

C'est pain béni(t) (it is blessed bread) – It's a godsend

Any way you slice it, it's plain to see that bread plays a central role in French culture. And I can assure you how glad one is to get a taste of such a wonderful culture!