Paris baguette

Ah, the much-longed-for Paris baguette. It’s one thing about Paris that lives up to the hype.

Bread in Paris is usually good, it’s always inexpensive, and it’s the easiest way to refuel between 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m, when most restaurants are closed. You’ll find a boulangerie on every corner. Also, the word boulangerie is really fun to say, even if you don’t pronounce it quite right (guilty as charged).

There are many types of bread at Parisian boulangeries, of course, and there are several types of baguettes. If you want to get fancy, check out David Leibovitz on bread. And here’s what he has to say about my favorite Paris baguette, the tradition:

A Baguette tradition, Baguette à l’ancienne, or Baguette de campagne are names given to baguettes that are mixed, hand-formed (you can tell by the pointy ends and irregularities in the loaves), and baked on the premises, and usually have levain (sourdough) starter in them.

I prefer baguette tradition to the regular baguette, which the French call baguette ordinarie, or just, you know, baguette and which is, in my mind, quite ordinary. The tradition is chewier and denser. The ordinaire is sort of fluffy on the inside, and whiter. I do buy the regular baguettes for my son’s school sandwiches, because a)I buy it the afternoon before so I can make his sandwich in the morning, and the ordinaire retains its softness better overnight, and b) the hard crust on the tradition can make eating it in sandwich form kind of unpleasant on the roof of the mouth.

Words to know: bonjour madame, une tradition, s’il vous plait, bien cuit, c’est tout, and merci. 

Carrie Anne of French is Beautiful, who has lived in Paris a lot longer than I have and who happens to teach French, did a write-up on the subject of ordering bread in French for Everyday Parisian. In her post, Carrie Anne explains some of the finer points of the feminine and masculine as they relate to bread.

You’ll also find a great list of French bread vocabulary at French Today.

And now, for the (totally opinionated) video. Here’s how order a baguette in Paris, even if your French is terrible and you can’t tell your Euros from the pounds you just picked up at Heathrow on your way to Paris. In this video, I tell you how to order my favorite stand-by, baguette tradition.