The Best Baguette in Paris

We've been eating a lot of traditional French cooking, so today we went to a fast food Japanese place.  You could compose your own bento box with 3 to 7 different foods.  They put your food in a shallow cardboard dish and put the dish on a wooden tray.  This being France, they also give you bread to go with your meal.  I had noodles, salad, and cucumbers in my bento box while Bill had noodles, sauteed tofu, and carrots.  This was a very inexpensive lunch - €16 (about $21).





After lunch we checked out the Thailand festival at Trocadero.  Very crowded, so we didn't stay too long.  We walked over to Rue Cler, another market street that we like, not far from the Eiffel Tower, but managed to keep our money in our pockets.

By law every boulangerie in France must offer a baguette for 1 euro or less - apparently the French did learn something from their revolution.  These inexpensive baguettes are made in factories and not very exciting.  However, the artisan boulangeries also offer baguettes de tradition, baguettes made with a premium flour and using traditional methods.  These cost just a little more, but usually less than €1.30.   Needless to say, we spend the extra few cents to get the traditional baguettes.  Today's baguette cost us €1.15.  The traditional baguettes usually have pointed ends and the center has lots of air pockets.   In the photo you can see the cloth bag we take with us to carry our grocery purchases home.

 Every year there is a contest to determine the best traditional style baguettes in Paris.  Boulangeries from all over the city enter the contest and 10 of them are chosen as the best.   When we were here in 2011 we gave ourselves a project of trying the winning baguettes from 2010 and 2011.  Today we started our challenge of trying the winning baguettes from 2012 and 2013.  The bread in the photo was Winner 8 in the 2013 contest.  Once you leave the boulangerie, the first thing you do is bite off the end of the baguette to see how it tastes.  This baguette was delicious and deserved to be among the 2013 winners.

We didn't buy any cheese today because we have some left over from yesterday.