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Baguettes and Vacation: France versus Bakers · Ridiculous History

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Bon joul, Welcome to the show. My name is Ben,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and I just might be addicted to carbs mapel noel
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and I've been trying to go a little lighter on
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the carbs lately, but I am a big fan of
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a good baguette. Yes, agreed. And here in the US
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: we have a little bit more leeway with the definition
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: of what a bighette is. And despite how important carbs
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: might be to knowl to myself and to our super producer,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, in France, it turns out they're much more important, crucial,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: big time. That's why for two centuries there was a
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: law on the books in Paris that basically established a continuous,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: free flowing access to bread. And this was most important
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: during the summer months when a lot of Parisians take vacations.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Um and it's a big deal. The you know, Paris
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: can feel like a ghost town during July and August.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: And this law was established because the last time that
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: France or out of bread, well you know there there
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: there was there were riots in the streets and people
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: got decapitated and hanged. Yes, there were rains of terrors
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that were related in a way to bread. And for
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: anyone who's interested in the role that food can play
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: in social revolution. We promise you it's a real thing.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: You're not crazy. Butter had a rule to play in
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: an earlier episode. That's true, and bread has always been
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: a pretty important staple of the French diet. In fact,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: according to the Smithsonian UH, the average worker during the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: eighteenth century spent half, that is, half of their wages
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: on bread because not only was it delicious and you
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: know something you could put a nice piece of brion,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was how they got their sustenance more
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: than anything else. Right, It's true. You know, we have
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: to consider in ages past people didn't often have the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: same UH concept toward food or toward nutrition that you
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: would find to be more common today. For example, a
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: lot of times today people eat for pleasure rather than
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: mandatory survival, and if bread wasn't available for a lot
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of people, it could mean that they might starve. This
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: was so important that in Napoleonic times police were even
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: in charge of grain inspection and quality controls sort of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: an f d A, but oriented entirely toward bread. And
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: when there was a wheat shortage, things went crazy very quickly. Yeah,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: it's true. Like you know how in the United States
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: we referred to the president as the commander in chief
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: because he's in charge of the military for all intents
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and purposes. Well, in France during this time, the king
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: was referred to as Boulanger de realm, or prime baker
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: of the Kingdom. That was kind of a pretty pretty
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: serious job, and in fact, there were these Napoleonic codes
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: that were established for everything from how to proof the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: dough to make the bread, to the ratio of the ingredients. Uh,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: this is all very very very important. And it not
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: only was the important because of it its place as
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a staple food, but it was a cultural thing as well,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and they took their bread making very very seriously. Yes, absolutely,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: which is not an exaggeration to say that all hell
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: broke loose if something went wrong with the bread supply.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy five there was a weak shortage and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: green prices skyrocketed, and to me things more complicated. The
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: new king at the time, Louis the sixte decided to
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: allow a free market of grain within the country, and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: this led to speculation. Flower merchants, who are already kind
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of a distrusted segment of society along with Baker's held
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: back grain supplies. And I read somewhere that certain flower merchants,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to um kind of control prices, would cut their flower
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: with everything from like chalk to even bone meal and
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: sawdust as well. Right, And this sounds maybe on the offset,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: a bit silly, Right, Maybe it sounds like too much
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: of a nanny state to have laws controlling bread, but
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: it is incredibly important. There hadn't been a famine in
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: France for decades before this occurred, but all the sudden,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the poorest people in the country were unable to buy
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: flower for bread, and they rioted. Yeah, and this what
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: was referred to as the Flower War, is considered by
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: most historian this is being the precursor to the French
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Revolution that took place fourteen years later. Um. And actually,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I think now would be a good time
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: to introduce a new segment we've been kicking around. You see,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: our our super producer, Casey Pegram, is also our resident Francophile. UM.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And so we are going to have a segment with
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Casey that I would affectionately like to refer to as
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Casey on the Case. For thus spake Casey. We're still
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: kicking it around, true, Casey Pegram, welcome to the show,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: my friend. Hello, thanks guys. So, Casey, we we sort
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of bury the lead just to touch in this story. Um,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about how these days during
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the summer months, Paris kind of clears out a little bit.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And you go to Paris about once a year. Would
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you say that's pretty accurate? Oh yeah, they call Le
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Grand Descants the big vacation And yeah, Paris in July
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and August gets extremely hot. Many many places are not
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: air condition climatiz um and that's actually a point of advertisement.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: If like a movie theater has air conditioning, they will
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: put that like saw climatize and it's sort of like
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: even if you don't care what the movie is, just
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: go in there and chill out for a couple of hours.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Paris basically empties out and just becomes like
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the domain of tourists for a couple of months. And
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: when we were researching this episode off air, we really
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: wanted to lean on your abilities as a Francophone to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the the laws that
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: we're kicking around. That it is true, right, Nolan, I
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: haven't been just making stuff up for the past few minutes. No,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: it's it's real. So you guys have talked about the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Flower War, correct, and that's kind of the precursor to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: this event that happens in October of seventy nine where
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: this poor, poor baker, Denis Francois, who was confronted by
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: an angry mob that basically thought he was hoarding bread um,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: possibly just to drive the price up or potentially to
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: keep it on reserve for royalty and military people things
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: like that. This is a big deal, especially consider what
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: had happened during the Flower War, where they thought the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: king was hoarding the flower so that the people who
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: were relied on it for their daily sustenance could not
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: get what they needed to make their daily brand right.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: So this is kind of just a continuation of those, uh,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: those tensions. And as we see, an angry crowd confronted
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: this bakers bakery um, demanded that he come out, brought
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: him to what was then called Plus de grev which
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: today in modern times is known as lottel le Ville.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It's the city Hall. Essentially, if you've ever been to Paris,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: you've probably walked by this place. It's kind of a landmark.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It's very central, it's right by the Seine, and it's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a cool building. But they brought him to this public
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: square basically summarily executed him. They hung him and they
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: decapitated him, and they paraded his head on a pike
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: around town. They brought it to other bakers to kind
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: of intimidate them. Apparently they waited on a scale at
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: one point of one of the vickers and uh and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: like a baker's scale. Yeah, exactly exactly why the baker, though,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: that seems like such misplaced anger. I mean, this need
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: is trying to like feed his family. Was he considered
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: part of the aristocracy. Was he looked at as being
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: an enemy of the people of peasants? Well, he would
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: have been, you know, relatively middle class and controlling access
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to a resource that everyone needs. What's interesting to me, too,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: is that we don't have any solid proof or whether
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: he was actually doing something wrong. Most of what I
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: read said that in retrospect, this was a totally innocent
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: guy that just got caught up in like an angry
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: mob that was looking for somebody to blame for the
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: problems that we're going on. So what happened next, Well,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: so after this guy was killed, the National Assembly meets
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and they basically decide that they're going to declare martial
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: law and that they are going to ban all public gatherings,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: any kind of public protests. There will be a red
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: flag that signals the presence of martial law. So you'd
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: be given three chances to disperse. You could take from
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: your group, you could select six people um to kind
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: of represent your grievances and whatever solution you're kind of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: angling for. Everybody else's supposed to disperse peacefully. There'll be
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: a second warning and a third warning. If after that
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: third warning you're still there, you're still protesting whatever, they
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: are authorized to use armed force against you and basically
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: kill an entire crowd if they if they decided to
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: stick around. So this is in the thick of the
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: French Revolution. This is coming a couple of weeks after
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the March on Versailles, which is what brought the king
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: back to Paris and kind of returned rule of the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: country to Paris where it had been displaced to Versailles.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Let me right, So that was even even that catchphrase
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: is tied to this whole idea of bread being such
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: a crucial component of everyday life, and the fact that
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette was so clueless and insulated that she would
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: just say it's fine that they can eat cake, right
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: because they have that surely right. Isn't that a joke?
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Kind of a little bit out of touch. Yeah, and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: there's a there's an interesting tale within that, uh, within
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that too, about the folklore versus the fact of that.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right that it was allegedly or according
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: to the legend in response to them saying, you know,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the people have no bread. No, but I saw it
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: in in a film, so it was Sofia Coppola film.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: So that's definitely exactly how I went down. She's the
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: one who did Dracula. She was she was in Godfather three. Okay,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: remember on the Stairs. No spoilers, right right, Godfathers take Manhattan, right,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that's the one. But no, this is really just because
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: then this is ultimately correct me if I'm wrong, Casey,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: because you are in fact on the case. Um. This
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: is what led to this decree in seventeen nine from
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Louis the sixteenth that put this system in place. Because okay,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: so they weathered the grain shortage, they got through that.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: But now it was like, what happens if if the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: bakery is closed if everybody takes the grand vacation at
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the same time. You did say, though, that didn't really
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: become a cultural thing until a little bit more into
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the twenty century, that the idea of that particular time
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: for vacation. But even still right, so the seventeen nine
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: or seventeen ninety ruling has to do with basically empowering
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: authorities to make sure that bread stays in regular supply
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: so that people don't have a reason to riot. When
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: it gets into the twentieth century and you start getting
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: things like guaranteed vacation time for workers, and this kind
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: of culminates in the cultural tradition of the grand viscance,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: where people take as much as like six weeks off
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: consecutive during the summer. Everybody leaves Paris and goes to
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: like the coast of France. Then it became an issue
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: because if everybody left at the same time, if everybody
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: decides to take off July, you're probably not going to
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: be able to get like a decent bigette in Paris
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: for that month. And that's you know, they view that
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: as a pretty serious problem. So what happens to the consumers? What?
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Whatever will we do? Right? Exactly? So it was then
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: decided that these Boulanger's bakers would have to coordinate with
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: their local authorities when they wanted to take time off,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and you know, it would have to coordinate from all
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the other bakeries in the areas, such that you never
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: found like a neighborhood that just didn't have a bakery open.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: So someone have to go in July, someone have to
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: go in August. And it was half and half correct,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and it it almost became like these two groups almost
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: identified like I'm a july In, I'm in Augustian. It's
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: very strange. So this wouldn't be on the case with
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Casey if we didn't hear a little sample of your
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: dulcet French tones. So could you give us a little
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: reading from this this ordinance, Casey? So sure, this is
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: article number six of the law of October seventy nine
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: against gatherings or martial law. In other words, so here
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: we go, the three warnings. The little poetry music in
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the back, some kind of dramatic accompanimentilitids Mason decil to do.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: So they will be warned in a high voice by
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the municipal officers or one among them. Three warnings to
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: return peacefully into your home Passion decil Tony de Massilla.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Three warnings to return peacefully to your home La premier exn.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: The first warning will be expressed in these terms. NAIs
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Marciel could choose Saint Criminelle. So notice we'll be given
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: that martial law has been proclaimed that all gatherings are criminal.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: We're going to shoot Claisbon, Citoyne, Saltier. Good citizens go home,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Aladisium Atras Marcion. So on the second and third warning, Stilibanna,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So on the second and third warnings, they're gonna skip
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the preamble and just say we're gonna shoot good citizens,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: go home. Municipal second. So the municipal officer will announce
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: whether it's the first, second or third warning. And if
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: you're not out by the third warning, all bets are off,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you're probably gonna get shot. Beautiful, I mean terrified, beautiful performance.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: And this has been on the case with Casey. You
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: know what, I am a big fan of that segment.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Old don't you think that added some context? It added
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: some real new mommy to this episode, I think, and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: there's more to the story, because you see, it turns
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: out this law isn't just something that happened and then disappeared.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: It has been, as we said at the top of
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the show, on the books for centuries, and it's been
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: periodically revised, rewritten, reworked, as Casey mentioned, with the emergence
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: of workers rights totally and because you know, you don't
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: really see a whole lot of huge, large scale famines
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: happening in Europe these days, so it was relaxed. Uh in,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And we mentioned this briefly during Casey on the case,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: but half of the bakers in Paris were able to
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: shut down during the month July as long as the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: other half stayed open. And then bakers were actually required
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: to post notices in their windows of where a customer
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: could could get a croissant or a bag at within
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: walking distance because it was all about this community, neighborhood vibe,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it was it was you had to be
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: able to walk there. It was very much part of
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: day to day. You could not be expected to, you know,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: hop a taxi to another part of town. My word,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the very idea, the very idea. This is a really
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: cool detail to me. Because I like it. It seems humanizing.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: It's not enough just to tell the authorities, hey, I'm
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: gonna be gone in July. You got to support your
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: people too totally. And it feels like it we've gotten
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: away from it being, uh, they're being concern over riots
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and it being much more about maintaining that fresh baked
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: bread culture that has sustained in France throughout the generations.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: And you will hopefully be as thankful as we are
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: to note that the consequences for this are no longer
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you know, life threatening, absolutely not. In fact, even when
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: they were still on the books, you if you didn't
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: get permission, you decided to do what you wanted. Um,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you could get a fine um which was a minimum
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: of believe eleven euros a day, which is around thirteen
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: American dollars back in I think two thousand five, or
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: about twenty dollars um in bucks. And the story continued
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: in the French government eased some of the remaining restrictions
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: on Baker's holidays as part of a larger effort to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: streamline their notoriously sluggish bureaucracy. I mean, can you imagine
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: having a law on the books for two hundred years.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine what other weird, little esoteric legal nuggets
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: remained on the books, Probably stuff about spitting in public.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know berat quotas I would imagine. I hope
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I don't get in trouble for that one. But it's true.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: When this relaxation occurred in a lot of local Parisians
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: feared there would be a by getty, and to some
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: degree they did experience one. Because the government no longer
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: coordinated Baker holidays for the industry, Baker's had a tough
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: time knowing when they should leave. The ones that stayed
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: open ran out of bread quickly, and some were worried
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that their quality was suffering because there was such an
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: increase in demand. Because literally, for the first time since
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the revolution, Baker's could go on vacation whenever they wanted,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: like normis, which is the Baker word for us exactly.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I saw an article in the Daily Mail
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: UM with some great quotes of kind of like the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: scoop of how this is playing out today in the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: streets of Paris. There's a quote from Lynn Segel, who
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: was a Parisian resident, UM that goes as such, I
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: went out to get a baguette a few days ago,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and the too closest boulangerie's to me were both closed
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: for the first time ever. Then the next day a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: woman on the street stopped me asking where the closest
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: open one was. Only the bad ones stayed open, only
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: the bad one. And this we we should paint a
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: picture of why this is so important. Even now for
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: something to be called traditional homemade bread, only four ingredients
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: legally can be used flower, water, salt and yeast. Seventy
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: of bread is still produced in Bolingeris those those local
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: bakeries rather than industrial warehouse factories. You know. Uh. While
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: worries of a bread shortage have you know, fallen a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: little bit in the years since the regulations loosened, there
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: are new worries on the horizon. It appears people are
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: eating fewer and fewer baguettes. Yeah, it's true. Um per
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: capita consumption of bagatts has fallen by more than eighty
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: p since n um and at that time the average
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: person in France ate more than three three of them
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a day. That's a lot, isn't it. These are big
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: man right And today it's as of seen, it's down
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: to about a half a loaf a day, so analysts
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: will attribute the drop to multiple factors, including maybe this
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: preference for lower carb diet or concerns about gluten consumption,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: while some bakers say it's because the bread just doesn't
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: taste as good as it did back in the you know,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: the good old days of the pre revolutionary friends. Yeah,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and that Daily Mail article, there's another quote from a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Parisian artist named Anthony Stephenson who talks about being pretty
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: bummed out that because of the scarcity of high quality bread,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: he's now having to buy what he refers to as
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: quote those strange half cooked mini baguettes from my local
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: supermarket and putting them in the oven. So that is
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: not cool, uh for Mr Stephenson. And I actually found
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: an article in the New York Times. The headline is
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a baker's crusade rescuing the famed French boulangerie. Because of
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: this decrease in bread consumption, there is a sense that
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: that culture, that history of artisanal baking, is being lost.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: So a man by the name of Pascal Regio, a
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: French businessman, has decided to try to save the fledgling
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: French authentic French boulingerie by coming up with a model
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: that allows scaling of these businesses while also using higher
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: quality ingredients. And in order to do that, he is
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: going to shrink each store, making it where you only
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: have to have one person to run it and buying
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: ingredients centrally. That allows the shops to enhance the quality
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: um and also increase bargaining power. And it limits the
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: number of products sold, so you might have a store
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: that only sells baguettes as opposed to diversified like bakery
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: where you have all kinds of other pastries. So this
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: isn't a big warehouse plan. This sounds like a community
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of what would be smaller stores that are in keeping
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: with French tradition. This could help trigger a resurgence, right
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: because we saw the numbers of these traditional bakeries dropping
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: over the past few decades. That's right. Looks like there
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: were twenty eight thousand of these authentic bakeries and that's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: down from thirty seven thousand, eight hundred just twenty years earlier.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And that is from a report on bread and France
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: from Euromonitor by Alexander Gornson. And on this note we
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: will end our exploration of bread war and revolution in France. However,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: if you feel like the story should continue, we would
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: like to cordially invite you to France's annual bread Festival,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: usually held in May. This gives you enough time, hopefully
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: to schedule your plans, and of course we want pictures
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: if you happen to go to the bread Festival, and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: let us know if you have lived in France or,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: like Casey, spent a great deal of time there. We'd
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: like to hear what your favorite bakeries are. We'd like
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to hear your impressions of uh, where bakers stand in
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: French society today. I'm very interested in that because over
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: just the course of this episode we saw baker's being
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: unfairly characterized as villains and then as models of the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: working class, as masters of their craft. So what are
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: they today? You can write to us at Ridiculous at
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. You can drop us a
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: note on Facebook or Ridiculous History there too. I think
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: we have a Twitter now. You can tweet at us
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: at Ridiculous History or um. You can check out our
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Instagram pages also Ridiculous History, and of course, most importantly,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: let us know if you have suggestions for an episode
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: we should cover in the future, so please join us
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: for more gaffs, laughs on the next episode of Ridiculous History.