A French bread fan lets the Grand Prix de la Baguette de tradition française be her guide to the city
PARIS – I am in love with the art and heritage of French bread. Fortunately I’m not alone. Each year one chef is chosen in the Grand Prix de la Baguette de tradition française, an accolade bestowed each April for the past 25 years. The winner goes to a handcrafted baguette that beats out dozens of entrants from across Paris and tops a list of 10 finalists; all compete for a cash prize of 4,000 euros ($4,500) and — most importantly — mass recognition for superior artisanal baking. All 10 are then permitted to emboss a gold laurel on their shop window emblazoned with the year of award and their ranking.
That gold stamp means each year’s list of winners provides an unusual guide to the city, a path toward walking Paris with an eye to the best, most iconic, crispiest baguettes imaginable. It offers travelers a key to the city and a tasting menu of one of the anchors of every French table.
Over four chilly days in March, my partner, Ian, and I embarked on a journey of gluten. A mission of carbohydrates. A 96-hour tasting marathon.
We ate as many of the award-winning baguettes as we could. Baguettes studded with seeds. Baguettes that are simply traditional. Baguettes sliced in half and stuffed with tuna. Baguettes adorned with brie, arugula and pears. I ate them with jam. With goat cheese. With butter. With salt. With nothing.
We walked 12 miles one day, 10 another. We saw Paris anew and witnessed how the local boulangeriepatisserie still marks each arrondissement. Once or twice I cheated, diverting to eat the wheaty country loaves at the Poilâne bakery in the sixth and tasting the exquisite croissants at Maison Plisson in the third.
But mostly I ate baguettes, dropping crumbs in my scarf and noshing as I strolled. It was our first major trip away from our children; we wanted to make the most of it.
Beyond the Eiffel Tower, or the kissing couples on bridges across the Seine, the Louvre, the Pompidou, the Tuileries, the beloved, beleaguered Notre Dame — there is one image that, for me, has always symbolized Parisian life: the early morning and midday line out the door of a boulangerie. It is a time-honored wait for a baguette, typically endured next to a row of perfect pastries behind a glass case.
That line is democratizing — in it you’ll find students and besuited office-goers, workers in painters’ overalls, proper matrons with purses that click shut and coats that nip in at the waist, tourists and shopkeepers. Each patron hands over 1.10 to 1.30 euros (about $1.25 to $1.50) for a baguette.
The Prix de la Baguette comes with an honor that bestows more work, that being 12 months of baking for the Elysee Palace in Paris, the home of the French president. Prize-winning loaves are judged on a crispy crust with just the right amount of crumb and strict adherence to French rules for the perfect baguette: an exact amount of flour, yeast, water and salt. No other ingredients. They must be baked in the same place where they are sold.
On day one of my carb-heavy adventure, I went to three recent prize winners and finalists in the Marais: Ernest & Valentin above the Arts et Metiers metro stop in the third arrondissement, where you can watch bakers turn out baguettes in real time through a picture window and pick up a gravlax sandwich on seededbaguette or a brie-arugula-pear combo on traditional. I tried a plain baguette at Maison Hubert Rambuteau on Rue