FRENCH president Emmanuel Macron has called for the nation’s baguette to be protected as a world treasure by Unesco.
The UN cultural organisation already has washoku – traditional Japanese cuisine – Belgian beer and Korean kimchi on the list. The Neapolitans got their pizzas on there too. So why not the baguette? Bread is to the French what the potato is to the Irish.
About six thousand million baguettes are produced in France each year. In the early 1900s, bread was such a staple that nearly three baguettes were being consumed by each French person each day. That has plunged to about half a baguette today... but the folk memory lingers on the lips and in the hearts.
The baguette is quintessentially French. Picture a stereotypical Frenchman and he shall wear a beret, a striped Breton top and carry a crisp baguette under his oxter.
There is an episode of The Simpsons when Homer is in France and misses his blue-haired Marge. He sees her face everywhere – notably atop a bunch of baguettes in a large bread basket.
Macron was speaking after an approach by the National Confederation of French Bakers – skilled artisan bakers working in small bakeries dotted across the country.
They are the Davids fighting the onslaught of the big supermarket Goliaths – and theirs is a traditional way of life that needs protected.
When the French pray: Give us this day our daily bread – it echoes down the centuries.
I am 100 per cent behind Macron and the French bakers. For a whole year, the baguette was a staple when we lived in Paris. There was something delightful about tripping down the steps and out the big iron apartment door on to Rue Milton – looking up the street to check that the white dome of the Sacre Coeur basicilia was still there and hitting the local boulangerie.
“Bonjour madame” came the early greeting from the woman at the counter. “Un pain, s’il vous plait,” I’d say, then head back up the street with a large loaf under my arm to slather in white French butter and apricot jam.
By the end of the year, we were all paying the price. It was hard to ignore the thickening waist line.
Dungarees were having a comeback at that time but when I tried on a bright green pair and swished back the dressing room curtain in a Parisian boutique, my Aussie friend rolled her eyes and muttered about a big fat Irish leprechaun.
Not being French, the allure of the baguette did eventually wear thin. Marks and Spencer had just opened its doors in Paris at that time, and we found ourselves tripping across the city to pay a visit.
We wanted real tea bags – not the feeble type you dangle into cups of hot water – and we wanted the old square pan loaf – the kind that you toasted in a proper toaster and spread with good Irish yellow butter.
The journey to the supermarket became a pilgrimage. It was like that old Irish ad about the man working in a faraway desert and dreaming about Ireland... his dream invariably involved barmaid Sally O’Brien and a cool pint.
His catchphrase was always: “What I miss about home...”
And down the years of pickling gherkins in Germany, au pairing for the countess in France, sharing railway carriages with old women clutching cages of live chickens in Yugoslavia and gagging on syrupy black coffee in Greece – it has been the homecoming and the joy of the familiar that I remember.
The time that our inter rail cards were running out, we spent five nights on boats and trains and ferries without a bed to our names. On the last leg of the journey on the ferry to Ireland, a small dog threw up in a cage and tiptoed around his own vomit.
We dangled over the rail on the deck as the boat pitched and the waters churned and we prayed for the world to end. Heaven was that moment when we touched Irish soil. We didn’t quite get down on our knees and kiss it like the Pope.
Instead we celebrated our homecoming with a large fresh pan loaf, Irish butter and a box of Barry’s tea bags. We celebrated in Comber potatoes mashed with butter and cabbage and rashers of bacon.
Macron was right – food is a treasure – whether it be a crisp French baguette or a decent cup of tea and a Comber spud.
