French baguette makes UN cultural heritage list — but some refuse to toast the decision | CBC Radio

The baguette has been added to the United Nations’ cultural heritage checklist, delighting French bakers all over the world. But at the least one bread knowledgeable says he is feeling downright crusty concerning the choice. 

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has voted to incorporate the “artisanal know-how and culture of baguette bread” on its checklist of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which goals to carry consciousness to — and encourage the safety of — vital cultural practices.

UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay says the choice “celebrates the French way of life.” But one pre-eminent bread scholar disagrees.

“This is not a day of celebration,” bread historian Steven Kaplan informed As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

Kaplan, a professor emeritus from Cornell University, says a baguette is an attractive factor, and a practice effectively price preserving — however solely when completed proper. 

The UNESCO itemizing, he says, does not do sufficient to distinguish a correct French baguette — lovingly crafted by artisans and eaten contemporary — from the frozen, mass-produced knock-offs you get on the grocery retailer.

“To use the Dickensian binary, it’s a tale of two baguettes,” Kaplan mentioned.

On the one hand, he says, you might have the “baguette of tradition.” This bread takes time. It’s made with a leavener, has an extended first fermentation, and makes use of no components. “The result is a baguette that is often sumptuous, voluptuous, spellbinding, just magnificent,” he mentioned.

On the opposite hand, you might have what he calls “the baguette of creation” or the “white baguette.” This is made with yeast, and makes use of salt and different components to “mask the absence of taste.”

“When I taste a bread like that, I feel offended. I feel a certain kind of rage,” he mentioned. “It is the gradual erosion of artisanal competence, and it gives us a baguette, alas, which is, by and large … without much taste, without much aroma, without much excitement, without much life. 

“And what UNESCO does is blur the distinctions.”

Due to time zone differences, CBC was unable to reach UNESCO for comment before deadline.

However, the UN heritage body’s listing specifically recognizes and promotes “the normal manufacturing course of” of the French baguette, and references “artisanal know-how.”

“Baguettes require particular data and methods: they’re baked all through the day in small batches and the outcomes differ in accordance with the temperature and humidity,” it reads.

“The manufacturing course of is primarily transmitted by way of work-based coaching, combining college programs with work expertise in a bakery. This apprenticeship allows future bakers to amass the required data of the substances, instruments and course of.”

‘It’s a part of the heritage,’ says Chef Marc Thuet

The baguette, a fluffy, elongated loaf of bread with a crunchy crust, is a symbol of France around the world and has been a central part of the French diet for at least 100 years.

According to UNESCO, it is made with only four ingredients: flour, water, salt and leaven and/or yeast, “from which every baker obtains a singular product.”

“The baguette is a day by day ritual, a structuring component of the meal, synonymous with sharing and conviviality,” UNESCO’s Azoulay said. “It is essential that these expertise and social habits live on sooner or later.”

Marc Thuet, a Toronto-based chef who originally hails from France, helped popularize traditional baguettes — and, in fact, artisanal bread more broadly — in Canada’s biggest city.

In an interview with The Current‘s Matt Galloway, he celebrated baguette’s UNESCO elevation. 

The Intangible Cultural Heritage list includes around 600 traditions from over 130 countries, including foods, dance forms, festivals and more. The aim, UNESCO says, is to protect cultural diversity and encourage “mutual respect for different methods of life.”

The baguette, Thuet says, is inextricably linked to the French way of life.

“It’s part of the heritage,” Thuet said. “The baguette is as essential because the Eiffel Tower within the French gastronomy.”

But Thuet also lamented that the baguette is “going downhill.”

“Lots of people had been shopping for it in these large superstores — all made by machine, no hand-made,” he said. “The craft wasn’t there anymore.”

Creating a truly good baguette, he says, is no easy feat. 

“The baguette appears quite simple, you already know, however it’s so onerous to make. Lots of people say, ‘Oh it is simply the baguette.’ But I imply, for us, for lots of artisan bakers, the baguette is the problem, you already know?” he mentioned.

‘The bakers psychologically need this’: historian

Kaplan, the bread historian, doesn’t begrudge the bakers who are happy with the UNESCO listing.

“The bakers psychologically want this,” he said. “But objectively, it is simply not a great factor.”

The introduction of shoddy baguettes to the market, he says, poses a dilemma for artisanal bakers.

“Even if [the UNESCO listing] will give them a pumped-up feeling, a form of bump for a few weeks afterwards, they are going to return to this dilemma: what can we do? Do we go ahead with the baguette custom? Or can we return to this white baguette, which is gloomy, denatured and a little bit bit morbid?”

As far as he’s concerned, there’s only one right answer.

“I need a bread that dances on my tongue. I need a bread that has an emotional cost. I need a bread that has a form of nearly intoxicating dimension to it. And that is the baguette of custom,” he said.

“I’m unhappy to see this blurring of the traces. I do not suppose it is good for bakers or conventional bakers. I do not suppose it is good for customers. It confuses all people.”

With recordsdata from Padraig Moran, The Current and Reuters. Interview with Steven Kaplan produced by Chris Trowbridge. Interview with Marc Thuet produced by Ines Colabrese.