I have always maintained that truth is stranger than fiction. In this case, bread laws in France imposed on French bakers take the cake again! No pun intended!
Bread, like French wine and cheeses, is very heavily regulated here. Perhaps that is one reason why the French can rightfully boast about their extraordinary traditional breads, cheeses, and wines, which are as symbolic as the tricolour flag.
What seems absolutely crazy and total ludicrous to an American is that French bakers can be fined for not closing one day a week!
In some areas, they can remain open to sell their sumptuous breakfast pastries such as croissants, brioche, pain aux raisins, escargots aux pistaches, chaussons aux pommes, and others, every day, but not bread!
Several times a year the National French Bakers Union, Confédération Nationale de la Boulangerie & Pâtisserie Française, has to levy fines against those bakers trying to outsmart the law.
Fines can vary from first offenders of a few euros to up to 3,000 euros for repeat offenders. Even more absurd is that the law in some departments will allow them to dispense bread through a machine, but not bake it 7 out of 7!
To even start to understand these nonsensical laws, you have to go beyond the written words to understand the French mindset.
Labor laws are very different from the established and cherished business models in America and other Anglo-Saxon countries, where profit is the key goal, above all else, and deemed more important than the welfare of workers.
First, you have to take into context the importance that bread has played in France throughout the centuries. For many French families, bread was considered an important staple of their daily diet.
To a large extent, this still holds true! A baguette or two a day is considered a sacred right and norm here!
Don’t forget that it was in part the bread wars that came about in 1789 due to the scarcity of bread at that time, that helped fuel the start of the French Revolution.
Certainly, you remember the words attributed to poor Marie Antoinette when hearing that the peasants did not have enough money to buy what bread that was available; thoughtlessly replied, “Well, let them eat bread”.
Since that time, baker laws started to come on the books and have since evolved over the course of time to include the protection of workers.
The laws around the aforementioned debacle of bakers being required to close one day a week goes back to 1920 but have been successively reestablished democratically by bakers in the majority of departments in France.
Anglo Saxons might wonder what is the rationale beyond these inane laws? Actually, there is a hidden line of benevolent protection for the baker, his workers, his profession and even surprisingly for his competition!
For the baker, there is the connotation that each baker deserves a day of rest to be with his family, whether he values or think he needs that or not!
That may be true, but the reality is an artisanal baker here has to go into his bakery to check on his rising dough that is given a much slower and longer rising time here to develop the necessary aromas and texture valued in a well-made artisanal baguette.
You can’t rush love nor the rising time of good flavoured bread, or you will end up with an industrialized tasting loaf!
Secondly, French labor laws are very strict in the protection of workers rights. Prior to 1920 laws, bakers apprentices were expected to carry out the majority of the workload and therefore were often exploited.
Apprenticeship is still alive and well here, but the majority of bakers go through several years of formation in bakery skills that are a separate part of culinary schools.
Nowadays, apprentices have rights and standards of pay as well as those student bakers doing obligatory hands-on practice in a bakery.
Thirdly, there are the voiced “fears” from professional bakers that in order to attract new bakers to go into the profession, they must be guaranteed at least a day off for themselves and their workers.
Again a different mindset has to be seen from a typical Frenchmen, in that work is not the be all meaning of living and especially it is not to interfere with the sacrosanct month long vacation.
Fourthly, and this will seem totally mind-blowing idiocy to Anglo Saxons, especially Americans, is that closing one’s bakery here, encourages his clients to try out his competing bakers!
Whoa! Who is their right mind would want that? Nevertheless, there is a certain friendly dependence with fellow bakers in France to provide bread on their obliged closing day, and during their annual preordained vacation closing.
Unfortunately, there is a downside into encouraging customers to go elsewhere because that elsewhere just might mean the nearest large supermarket chain, if no other baker can be found, which is the case in small rural areas!
There is already a war between the artisanal bakers and the industrialized supermarket bakeries, that have and will continue to threaten the erosion of artisanal bakers.
Some bakers have tried to outsmart the system by having two bakeries under their name and rotating the no bread day in each. A recent baker in a rural area in Normandy was fined recently trying to do just that.
The ruling against him stated that even if he had multiple bakeries, he could not sell his baguettes and round brown loaves of country bread created by him 7 out of 7, even though his different bakeries each had a different clsoing or no bread day!
These fines happen fairly often and only time will see if they can be continually applied in the future with supermarkets selling bread not being under the same laws.
This also depends on the majority of French to remain faithful to buying their breads from a real artisanal baker who crafts his breads with care and dignity wanting to preserve his own reputation.
I still see lines trailing out the doors of good bakers in Paris, but I unfortunately also see some folks toting bread from supermarkets too, either out of convenience or their palate sadly does not know the difference.
There is a lot of ongoing efforts to preserve and promote the excellence and tradition in French breads, cheeses, and wines in the public eyes, including a lot of outreach and education of children, who will be the future consumers.
Changes occur slowly here if at all and the French are generally very resistant to “inventing a new wheel” in food products for the pure sake of novelty and monetary gain.
It is this very stubborn resistance that has maintained the very high standards of quality that continue to glorify the fabulous foods and wines to enjoy here. Vive La France!
The French truly excel with their bread, wine and cheeses and I hope they continue to excel. I pray that the “bean-counters” behind the beaurocratic desks might have a little mercy on their fellow Frenchmen bakers and cut them a little slack. They, too, enjoy those delicious breads no matter when they are baked.
Thank you John! Being the world traveler that you are, you certainly bring another valid testimony to the culinary treasures available here. I like your term relating to the bureaucrats as being “bean counters’! Perfect image! Hugs to you and Gay.