Baguette: Intangible Cultural Heritage Candidate

The baguette has the opportunity to become an intangible cultural heritage of humanity after being submitted by the French Ministry of Culture to UNESCO for approval.

A fresh batch of baguettes From the countryside to the city, the long bread made by hand is a familiar image in the daily life of the French people. The baguette has also been a creative inspiration for many artists and has gone into many works of art. From a foreign perspective, when it comes to France, in terms of cuisine, the baguette is probably one of the most intimate and simple symbols, next to countless types of wine, champagne or cheese. So when did baguettes in France come from? According to historian Steven Kaplan, up to now, in France, there are usually three anecdotes about the origin of baguette bread. It is said by many that the long bread was invented by the bakers of Emperor Napoleon in the early 19th century. Lighter and less bulky than the earlier round loaf, the long loaves were easily carried by soldiers. people. In another anecdote, baguettes originated in Austria and were brought to France by a Viennese baker named August Zang in 1839, and were originally sold in Paris as ovals. And finally, the baguette was invented on the Paris subway site in the 1900s, a time when workers from all over France flocked here, and there were often fights between Brittany and regional workers. Auvergne. To prevent workers from stabbing each other with knives, contractors are said to have asked bakers to make loaves of bread that are easy to break by hand rather than using a knife. However, those are just oral anecdotes. Historian Steven Kaplan asserts that the traditional baguette originated in the 20th century, stemming from a change in the dietary needs of urban people. The affluent class living in urban areas wanted to eat fresh bread many times a day, while the big, round breads weighing 1.2-2kg at that time were too big, they had to eat a few meals to finish. Moreover, people also prefer to eat the crust rather than the inside. For centuries before that, bread was made with sourdough, obtained by the natural fermentation of bacteria found in wheat. For the workers, the process of making cakes is very hard work. Steven Kaplan recounted, the baker at that time was likened to a “white miner”, working all night. Many consider it inhumane to let bakers work in such conditions, leading to a movement to find ways to reduce their hardship. By 1919, France had a law banning bakers from working at night. Therefore, the craftsmen have come up with a simpler way to make bread and shape the long, thin baguette to bake the cake faster. And so the baguette was born. According to the National Federation of French Bakery and Pastry Shops, 32,000 artisan bakeries with 180,000 employees earn about 11 billion EUR/year in revenue. However, the French Ministry of Culture said that the number of bakeries has dropped sharply in the past five decades due to competition from supermarkets with industrial, frozen bread. Many people hope that the French Ministry of Culture’s selection of baguettes to submit to UNESCO for nominations for the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity will contribute to preserving France’s artisanal bread production from the competition of the industrial production methods.