Take a walk through Paris in the morning and the first thing you see are lines of people exiting local bakeries to buy breakfast baguettes. That’s because, across France, waking up early and buying a baguette isn’t just second nature; it’s a way of life. According to the Observatoire du Pain (yes, France has a scientific organization called the “Observatory of Bread”), the French consume 320 baguettes every second – that’s an average of half a baguette per person per day, and 10 billion baguettes per year.
It’s no surprise, then, that France takes its baguette very seriously. In fact, every April since 1994, a jury of experts has gathered in Paris to judge Le Grand Prix de la Baguette: a competition to determine the city’s best baguette maker.
Every year, around 200 bakers enter Paris' most coveted baking competition: Le Grand Prix de la Baguette
Each year, around 200 Paris bakers enter the competition, handing their two best baguettes to a panel of expert judges in the morning. The baguettes are inspected to ensure they are between 55 and 65 cm long and weigh between 250 and 300 grams. Nearly half of the more than 400 baguettes entered meet these strict criteria and move on to the second round: judging.
In the next round, a panel of 14 judges – made up of food journalists, previous winners and a few lucky volunteers – will analyse the remaining loaves based on five different categories: baking, appearance, smell, taste and crumb. The baguette should be soft but not moist; springy, with large, irregular holes, indicating that it has been slowly fermented and developed its aroma.
Last year's champion, Taieb Sahal, of Tunisian origin, was the youngest winner ever, at 26 years old. Previously, in 2018, another Tunisian, Mahmoud M'seddi, also won Le Grand Prix de la Baguette at the age of 27.
“I was lucky enough to grow up in a bakery,” M’seddi says, over his uneven, hand-shaped loaves at his small M’seddi Moulins des Prés bakery in the 13th arrondissement. “I grew up with my parents, as opposed to kids who went to daycare or had nannies. I was always in the bakery.”
M'seddi's passion for baking was evident and stemmed from his father. Originally from Tunisia, M'seddi's father came to France in the late 1980s while pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. "During his school holidays, he went to Paris to work in a bakery to earn some pocket money, and fell in love with baking bread. He dropped out of school and started baking bread instead," M'seddi recalls.
M'seddi has fond memories of watching his father shape dough into baton-shaped baguettes and working alongside him as a child. "Like a magician," he recalls. "I did that as a kid, mixing things together. I loved doing that."
When he won in 2018, Mahmoud M'Seddi was just 27 years old.
Although his mother warned him against becoming a professional baker because of the long hours and hard work, and the lack of vacation time, M'seddi decided to join the family business. M'seddi and his father now run three bakeries in Paris: Boulangerie M'seddi Moulin des Près, located south of the picturesque Butte aux Cailles neighborhood; Boulangerie Maison M'seddi Tolbiac, a few hundred meters away; and Boulangerie Maison M'seddi in the 14th arrondissement.
Every morning M'seddi wakes up at 4am to start preparing the dough for his now famous loaves, which are made entirely by hand. Chunky and light brown on the outside, they are the epitome of what a true Parisian baguette should be.
But he keeps his secret to making the perfect baguette a secret.
“I won't say,” M'seddi replied with a wry smile.
According to 2017 winner Sami Bouattour, baguette perfection is as elusive as M'seddi's performance. "When I was on the jury," Bouattour says, "it was easy to pick the top 10 or 20 baguettes. But then, when you compare a 3 to an 8, the difference is very small."
For M'seddi, the magic that sets his baguette apart from the billions of others consumed in France every year is simple: passion. "You can have exactly the same recipe," he says. "And if one person is more passionate than the other, they will have a better result. Even if you do it exactly the same, it's not the same. It's like magic."
M'seddi's Bakery
M’seddi is entitled to put a large gold decal in his bakery window to advertise his status as a champion of baguettes. But that’s not all. Each year’s winner also gets the honor of supplying the French president with bread every day – a privilege M’seddi proudly shares with the public via social media videos of his early morning routine of carrying a basket of fresh baguettes to the vast Elysée Palace.
Emmanuel Macron is clearly passionate about France's bread-making heritage: in 2018, the president proposed that the French baguette be inscribed on Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Neapolitan pizza, Croatian gingerbread, and flatbreads from Central Asia already appear on Unesco's list. But according to Macron, "the baguette is the envy of the whole world."
The baguette is more than just a staple - it's a symbol of Frenchness.
But while few icons are as quintessentially French as the baguette, its status and quality have been shaky in recent years. Starting in the 1950s, bakers began looking for shortcuts to make baguettes faster: relying on pre-made, frozen dough; and baking baguettes in molds rather than free-form. Instead of the crisp-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside loaves that M’seddi baked each morning, these pale, gooey baguettes lost their staleness as soon as they cooled. By the 1990s, they had become the norm for bakers and for Parisians.
“Bakers were very happy at the time,” Bouattour said as he led me past fresh loaves of bread at his Arlette & Colette shop in Paris’s 17th arrondissement. “But that killed our profession.” At Arlette & Colette, Bouattour sells a range of breads, pastries and viennoiseries, all handmade and all using certified organic ingredients.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently declared that the baguette is the envy of the world.
In an effort to save the traditional French baguette from widespread industrialization, France passed the Bread Decree in 1993, which by law mandated that a truly traditional baguette must be handmade, sold in the same place where it is baked, and made with only water, flour, yeast, and salt. Today, these new “traditional baguettes” make up about half of the baguettes sold in major French cities—and are the specimens judged in a competition that has taken place every year since 1994.
Today, however, some argue that supermarket bread, which is much cheaper than loaves sold in bakeries, is driving artisans out of the market. After all, French radioEurope 1It is reported that 1,200 small bakeries in France close every year.
“It's a shame,” M'seddi said. “It's bread. It's France. You need to buy it from a bakery where people get up early, where they make it by hand.”
The 1993 Bread Decree stipulates by law that a truly traditional baguette must be handmade, sold in the same place where it is baked and made only with water, flour, yeast and salt.
In addition to winning the prestigious competition, Bouattour and M’seddi have a few other things in common. Both went through the traditional trade school that many aspiring French bakers enter at age 16. Both have been professional bakers for less than a decade (as has 2019’s winner, former engineer Fabrice Leroy). And both are first-generation French, what Bouattour euphemistically calls “French-origin”: their family roots are elsewhere—or in their case, Tunisia.
Reminiscing about one’s racial origins is taboo in France, which is nominally egalitarian. The government has not collected information about the race or religion of its citizens since the 1970s (a policy that stems largely from surveys conducted during the Nazi occupation). But while France’s official political stance is one of equality, the fact that beaches ban burkinis and naturalization offices suggest Frenchifying the names of new citizens seems to tell those of “French origin” one thing: assimilate.
The Le Grand Prix de la Baguette competition created a level playing field as all baguettes were numbered.
However, the Le Grand Prix de la Baguette competition does a pretty good job of leveling the playing field for bakers, regardless of their knowledge and experience.
“All the baguettes are numbered, so we don't know who we're judging,” says Meg Zimbeck, founder of restaurant review siteParis by Mouth, explained her experience as a jury member. "The only difficulty is that the taste buds get tired. We have to taste so much."
The traditional baguette is the specimen judged in the competition, which has taken place annually since 1994.
It is noteworthy that since 2015, there have been four winners who are French bakers of African descent.
Djibril Bodian is the baker of the bakery.Le Grenier à Painin picturesque Montmartre. Also the son of a baker – and a first-generation Frenchman of Senegalese descent – Bodian decided at the age of 16 to follow in his father’s footsteps. Almost immediately, his pastry school teachers recognised his natural aptitude for the craft.
“Teachers started to use me as an example, telling others, ‘Be like Djibril!’” he recalls. “It gave me recognition, but it also put pressure on me. I didn’t want to disappoint the teacher.”
Baker Djibril Bodian has won the Paris Grand Prix twice, in 2010 and 2015.
By rule, the winner of the Le Grand Prix de la Baguette competition is not allowed to compete again for four years. But after winning the title of best baguette in Paris in 2010, Bodian said, "I had only one wish: to compete again as soon as possible. So for four years, while people might have thought I was resting on my laurels, I was working, trying to do better."
In 2015, Bodian won the competition for the second time.
“It was a huge pleasure and an honor,” he says, laughing. “But when I became a baker 22 years ago, no one thought a baguette could get you to the Elysée Palace.”
Bodian's success is due to both his Senegalese background and values as well as his training in France.
“I stopped thinking of myself as a foreigner a long time ago, but my origins have made me who I am today,” he says. “We all start with the same tools, the same teachers, but some people start to understand things differently. It has nothing to do with origins; it's just talent.”
The stories of Bodian, Bouattour, M'seddi and Sahal resonate as a reminder of France today: a diverse and multicultural country of people proud to be French.
“Whoever wins the competition is the winner,” M’seddi said. “He is the champion, whether he is an immigrant or not.”
What's better than pinching a piece of baguette?
And while he dismisses the importance of evoking a foreign root, he admits that there is a certain element of pride when someone of foreign origin wins the top prize.
"It's someone who is passionate about French culture, who has assimilated as a French person," he said. "We need to make people proud to be French."
What could be more proud than pinching a piece of baguette?
