The “Are you French?” Test No.1 – The Baguette Test

My result? FAIL.

There should be a picture of me on Fail.com.

There are several tests regarding baguettes in order to determine whether you are REALLY French or just a tourist. I have failed all of the tests presented to me so far. I am sure to fail more in the future.

Welcome to my life in France.

My most recent failure was done in a spectacularly public style…..but more of that later….

So what are these tests?

Let’s start with the basics.

If you are dining with the an average French family, and someone offers you some bread with your meal, you must always say “yes”. In fact, you have to do more than just say yes: you have to make a facial expression like you’re stranded in the desert and someone just offered you a bottle of icy cold water. You basically have to look like your life depends on eating a piece of bread with your meal. A French friend told me once that meals were inedible, INEDIBLE, unless bread was available at the same time – and they werent joking.

Once, I stupidly said “No thank you, I’ll be too full if I eat any bread with my meal”.

WRONG!

My hosts were mortified. They asked if I was sick. They slowly turned and resumed their own bread consumption with expressions of disgust, confusion, repulsion. Man, did I feel stupid.

But what to do when you dont, actually, feel like eating any bread with your meal? The foreigner’s “scam” to this test, is to make aforementioned “this bread will save my life” facial expression, take some bread, then dont eat it. In fact, people will usually be so obsessed with their own bread that they will automatically assume that the piece of your bread that remains is the last of the 5 pieces that you took during the meal, but couldnt fit into your stomach. No joke.

French Bread Mystery No.1

This brings me to the next test. Again, you’re eating a meal with an average French family. The host offers you the bread first because you are, after all, the guest. More than likely, the bread that you will be offered is a whole baguette. The whole thing.

Ah-ha! This is the next test!

As an Australian, I have, in the past, looked at them and the whole baguette strangely, then placed the baguette on my plate, and proceeded to cut off a slice with my dinner knife.

Oh, my, lordy, no! This behaviour is sure to make any French person think you’re retarded.

The correct reaction? Again, make a face like the baguette is a vaccine for cancer/solution to world peace, and tear off WITH YOUR BARE HANDS a piece of bread from the end, about 5cms long, then pass the remainder of the baguette to the person next to you (who will grasp the bread like it’s the long lost teddy bear from their childhood). That’s right kids. If you’re the last person to get a piece of baguette at that table, you can guarantee that everyone else has touched it. All over. This would fail every food safety test in Australia, no question. Here, its just how you eat bread.

French Bread Mystery Number 2

Did any of you guess the other major stuff-up I committed above? That’s right. Once I cut my piece of bread, I put the piece on my plate.

This is just absurd to most French people, and they often look at me with curiosity and disdain (sorry France, but this is one tradition I just refuse to accept).

In informal settings in France, people put their bread on the table, just in front of their plate. Maybe there’s a tablecloth, maybe a placemat, maybe its just a laminated tabletop that was (if you’re lucky) wiped with a damp smelly cloth. No matter. Put your bread on the table, not on your plate and you’re French.

Luckily, in formal dining settings, there is a small plate for your bread to your left.

French Bread Mystery Number 3

This just freaks me out. The French are so sophisticated and concerned about asthetics, and yet sopping up the leftover sauce on your plate with piece of bread is perfectly acceptable. Even in formal settings.

Just tear off a small piece of bread, and whoosh it around your plate! Voila!

It’s not compulsory to do this, but if you dont, your dining companions will likely think you’re not hungry, sick or on a diet.

Bread in Cafes/Restaurants Test

Happily, if you’re in a restaurant or cafe, it’s likely that the bread will already have been cut by the staff, and will arrive in a basket ready to select. Whether that bread is actually the leftover bread from someone else’s table, you’ll never know (but generally, you can assume that yes, that bread has already graced someone else’s table that day, and has probably been sneezed on at least once). In Australia this wouldnt be so much of a problem because we know not to touch food that we aren’t going to eat. One must certainly not make that assumption in France….

But again, you must take some bread and put it on your plate even if you’re not going to eat it. Dont forget to make the required face when offered bread by your dining companion.

If you are the first to take some bread from the basket, make sure you lift the basket and offer the bread to all of your dining companions.

BONUS POINTS!

You get bonus points if:

1. Before you tear off a piece of baguette, you ask the person next to you if they would like the end (in impolite circles, the end is called the “cul” or arse). For some people this is the best part of the baguette, so its bingo! if you offer it to them.
2. When selecting a piece of cut bread from the basket, you touch each piece until you find one that is slightly moist and tender, freshly cut. If you find a piece that is dry and hard, you screw up your face like someone offered you a cup of syphillis and say “Oh, this bread is so hard! It’s disgusting! What did they do? Cut it at 8am this morning? Humph….” and continue to touch and slightly squeeze each piece until you find one that is acceptable. Even if it is just slightly dry however, you must still eat it – dont forget that your meal wont digest without it. (Please note that, while you can test the bread at more formal dinners, it’s best to keep comments about it’s dryness to yourself – remember from previous posts that at formal events, you are just a very elegant chair, and elegant chairs dont have opinions about bread).
3. If every piece of bread in the basket is really hard as a rock, then you get super-bonus-brownie-points for calling the waiter over quietly, explaining in a very low voice that you are very sorry but the bread is just too hard to eat and could he please cut you some fresh bread. This will make any French man/woman want to marry you instantly.
4. You examine the bottom of the bread (the part that was resting on the tray in the oven). If there are little dot-like tracks, then this is “evil bread” that has been made by machine and fed into an oven by machine. It is still edible, but only in desperate times. If there are organic lines, no regular pattern, then this is “good bread” that has been made by the real hands of a boulanger and has been lovingly fed into an oven by hand. This is the only real French bread. You gain bonus points by commenting to your dinner companions as to whether the bread on your table is “good” or “evil”.

How to carry your Baguette

This is the best way to distiguish the tourists from the locals on the street. And boy, did I look like a massive tourist recently….

I went to a local boulangerie that I had heard made the best baguettes. I had to buy 3 baguettes for a dinner we were having at home that evening. There was, of course, a queue snaking out the door of the boulangerie. I ordered my baguettes, and as she placed them on the counter, I realised that it was going to be a bugger to carry them all, together with my other grocery bags. I asked the Boulangere if I could have a plastic bag for them.

Bah-boww! Wrong question. She stared at me and said “Its not possible to carry baguettes in a plastic bag”. But as I looked at all the flour covering the bread (which I didnt want to get on my coat), and the size and length of them, I was stubborn and asked for one anyway. Of COURSE I could carry them in a bag!

It all looked fine as I crossed the road. A main road. And when I reached the footpath on the otherside: plop, plop, plop. 3 baguettes on the ground and a handful of Frenchies staring at me in horror (or maybe they just felt sorry for the bread).

Thankfully, it had snowed earlier that morning, so the baguettes plopped onto a thin layer of snowflakes. The baguettes were expensive (for baguettes), and I figured that a little snow wasnt going to hurt our dinner guests. So this time, I held my baguettes like any normal French person would. I picked them up, hitched them in a bundle under my armpit, and wrapped my arm around them.

Yep, I had flour all over my coat. Yep, there may have been some sweat on the baguettes. But really, this is the only way to carry baguettes.

BONUS POINTS!

If you’ve bought your baguette on the way home from work, its likely that you’re starving. And while the French generally dont agree with eating and walking, its is  REALLY French to bite off the end of the baguette (the “cul”) and munch as you walk to your front door.

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Phew. That’s a lot of information about bread. And I’m sure that there are many more rules that I’m not even aware of yet. I’m probably still embarrassing myself regularly. I know, for a fact, that I get given the worst baguette in the boulangerie because I dont specify whether I want “well cooked” or “not well cooked”. Oh well, I guess that’s why I will still always be the little foreign girl in France. But I’m slowly beating them at their game!