Basic French bread—the simple baguette and bâtard—sells for 85 cents euro. In a town where takeaway hot dogs go for five euros and votive candles go for two, that's cheap. The basic product has much to recommend it: crusty and chewy. But it tastes like air, perhaps leavened with just a soupçon of sawdust. And it's not that the French have lost the knack for bread: a lot of the pricier stuff is just wonderful. All of which makes me wonder: do we have some subsidy action going here—some sort of basic lifeline that goes back to a time when bread was, oh, say, 85 percent of their income on food?
[Uh, 85 percent? Actually, I have no idea. I'm sure it was a lot higher than today, but exactly how high is above my pay grade—and in any event, I suspect subject to controversy.]
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