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Le problème du pain
Bread is one of the great pleasures of Paris. The croissants melt in your mouth, the tarts have a crust that is to die for and when you break a baguette the bloom crackles perfectly and yet the inside is moist and chewy. Moreover, I'm not talking about the best bread in Paris (which is likely the best in the world), I'm talking about the bread that you can find in any of thousands of neighborhood boulangeries and patisseries. Why is the bread in Paris better than any that I can find in Washington?
Two answers come quickly to mind. First, competition is intense. Every neighborhood has at least half a dozen shops to buy bread. Second, the French are used to high quality and will reject anything of low quality so tourists benefit from the informed local demanders.
I find both of these explanations wanting. We do have artisanal bread in the United States and take a look at your local supermarket, competition on bread quality is intense. At my local supermarket, there are dozens of different breads all of which compete with an on-premise bakery.
Furthermore, isn't bread making about knowledge? - i.e. the paradigmatic example of a public good and one that is supposed to diffuse easily around the globe. How difficult can it be to follow the recipe? (I know, that is my point.)
Comments are open if you have some ideas about why bread isn't nearly as good in the United States as in Paris. But you might also have guessed that I have a larger point in mind.
Le problème du pain is this - if it's difficult to spread the art of bread making from Paris to Washington then how can we ever hope to spread democracy from Washington to Baghdad?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on March 20, 2006 at 07:14 AM in Economics, Food and Drink, Law, Travels | Permalink
Comments
i've been living in France for the last 17 years. interesting anecdote on bread in France. when Marks & Spencers was here (they moved out of France a few years ago), their best selling food item was American-style sliced bread. It was alot softer than the sliced bread you find in the French supermarkets, and housewives loved it. It lasted for days, and it was popular with kids. Buying baguettes is fun when you're a tourist, but when you live here every day it can be a bit of a grind. Also, the baguettes get stale very, very quickly. A baguette you buy early in the morning will be stale by lunch. So wonder bread style products don't seem so bad.
as to competition among the bakeries: there may seem to be alot of them, but French people will tell you that there are alot fewer than there used to be. In fact, the number of boulangeries has declined over the last 40 years by an amazing amount (over 80% I think). Much of that is thanks to depopulation of rural areas and small villages. But also, bread consumption in France has plummeted (confirming that bread, even if it's really excellent, may actually be an inferior good). An additional factor is the growing role of supermarkets in food distribution. So in fact, while boulangeries do face competition, the competition they fear most (and the competition they seek legislative protection from) is not each other, but the big supermarket chains.
Posted by: dyoung at Mar 20, 2006 7:29:44 AM
Come to Dubai.
The French bread is authentic and outstanding although
not widely distributed.
I presume it is airfreighted in daily on Emirates perhaps.
Could it be possible to airfreight democracy to Baghdad?
About as likely as getting you daily deliveries of bread from Paris to
Fairfax, I suppose.
Following your lead I've done a bit of food blogging lately. The more
I live here the more I discover there are great places to eat.
How a chef in the Marriott could produce authentic and excellent Scottish
fare for the Caledonia Society banquet I'll never know. Haggis, mmm. Maybe
it too was air shipped.
Posted by: John B. Chilton at Mar 20, 2006 7:32:41 AM
I am hardly the baker, but how about: a) less use of frozen dough, b) higher quality grains in the flour, in part stemming from shorter supply chains, c) better salts in the bread, and d) better fats and butters in French bread. Add in a greater general attachment to bread (for a mix of economic and cultural reasons, most of all greater ease of walking to bread shops, but also fewer cheap processed alternatives, an area where America excels, and less reliance on national advertising for bread brands), and the bread makers know they can sell all or nearly all their fresh bread in a matter of hours. American bread has gotten much better very quickly and we have not stopped climbing the curve.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Mar 20, 2006 7:38:34 AM
Alex, being from Switzerland (where the bread is just as good as in France) and having lived in Washington, D.C., this is a question I have wondered about, too. At least part of the answer seems to have to do with the quality of inputs. A friend of mine, who is a baker, has played with the idea of opening a bakery in the US. He gave it up after a couple of months in the US because he had to learn that he was not able to reproduce the same quality bread he was able to produce in Switzerland. His explanation was that the quality of the flour as well as the water was very different, preventing the production of half-way decent bread. What does this mean for democracy? Maybe here, too, the quality of inputs matters.
Posted by: Thomas at Mar 20, 2006 7:57:32 AM
I have mixed feelings about bread in France--there seems to be an inverse relationship between variety and quality (you may be able to get the best croissants and baguettes in the morning, but there's not much else). But if croissants and baguettes were a much smaller niche (as they are in the U.S.), they wouldn't be as good. On one trip, I thought my wife was going to scream if she had to eat another plain croissant or pain chocolat for breakfast. And during that same trip (this was some years ago), the papers had a story about French bakers demanding the government DO SOMETHING because the French were eating more and more breakfast cereal in the morning and this was hurting bread sales.
Personally, I'm happy to trade a little bit of quality to get a lot more variety.
Posted by: Slocum at Mar 20, 2006 8:09:23 AM
There is a catch-22 at work in some countries. There is a requirement for bakers to invest in high-quality inputs and care in production, and that requirement is a well-informed consumer base who can distinguish their product from others and build their reputation by word of mouth. Meanwhile, a well-informed consumer base cannot develop without the suppliers. It's a lemons thing.
Self-promotional free-riding link: a piece on the general problem of good-quality bread (and beer) at http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2006/01/learning_by_dri.html.
Posted by: Tom at Mar 20, 2006 8:14:55 AM
My understanding is that croissants, at least, are all about the butter. That's how they get the delicious flaky layers and melt-in-your-mouth flavor. And I think there are USDA regulations that require butter to be pasteurized, unlike Europe -- and I think that many share the opinion that some of the little bacterial critters give European butter a superior flavor. Don't know about baguettes, but I'll note that there seem to be all sorts of US regional specialties that aren't easily reproduced elsewhere -- San Francisco sourdough and New York bagels come to mind. So it's not entirely a French thing.
Posted by: Don at Mar 20, 2006 8:34:46 AM
Tyler's answers are mostly about proximate causes, better fats and salts etc. Since better bread isn't produced by magic, there must be some such proximate causes but I am looking for more ultimate causes. Can't you buy these things in teh US? Why not? I don't buy that competition is less intense over bread in the US. Wegman's is trying to produce great bread they are just not suceeding.
Thomas mentions some inputs which perhaps cannot be duplicated or cannot be duplicated at reasonable cost, something about the water and the wheat. Combined with Tom's comments about well-informed consumes and the lemons problem (do read his longer post) I think this could get us somewhere but I'd like more detail before jumping on.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Mar 20, 2006 8:38:50 AM
I suspect that what we're really ruing here is a the lack of good (or maybe great) baguettes in the U.S., not breads generally. I grew up in the South and am thus partial to the "quick breads" of the region like biscuits and corn bread. What amazes me isn't their scarcity but their ubiquity and variety; try jalapeno cheese biscuits or blueberry cornbread for a treat. Even some of the fast-food chains can manage credible versions. And that points to a possible explanation--the French excel at making baguettes because baguettes matter there in a way that the don't here, and the same is true with our "heritage" breads here. If more folks craved good baguettes in the way that Alex does, more places would sell decent ones.
Posted by: Tim G. at Mar 20, 2006 8:51:14 AM
So, what causes the low quality inputs here? FDA regulations? A lack of subsidies?
Posted by: Sandy Smith at Mar 20, 2006 9:07:23 AM
Bread in France is quite good but I think that Germany has the best bakeries. French bakeries lack variety as one of the other commenters mentioned. In Germany (particularly in the southwestern part) you'll get fresh and delicious
baguettes, croissants and tarts but a you also get an incredible variety of different black breads, corn breads, roles, cakes, ... Besides a typical inner city street features at least 1 bakery per block.
See here for a typical range of bread and roles of a German bakery http://www.baeckerei-neff.de/brot.html
and here for the cake section http://www.baeckerei-neff.de/kuchen.html.
Posted by: Conny at Mar 20, 2006 9:08:12 AM
It would seem the issue is more about the demand... how many people in the States, or what percentage of grocery shoppers - probably better, as you may know what 'quality bread' is, while your mate who does the shopping cannot tell a difference (or worse, doesn't care) - really want to get a baguette or croissant???
If over 50% of the shoppers were to go on a daily basis to the grocery for fresh baguettes and croissants, I would presume the bakeries in the grocery stores would begin to cater to that, which would then create a better product (hopefully).
I was shocked when shopping this past December at a new grocery store when they had a bakery that was not part of the store... your payment and receipt was made directly to the baker and not Kroger. The benefit, however, was wonderful - the bread was fresh four times a day and the variety was better than I have seen in a stateside grocery.
In certain neighborhoods (affluent), it would seem to benefit both the consumer and the firm to allow an independent baker to create pastries and breads.
- cannon
www.soundgreen.com
Posted by: cannon at Mar 20, 2006 9:13:20 AM
Alex's response is, as you would expect, right on the mark. But most of the differences in ingredients *can* be traced to underlying economic causes. For reasons of rents, commuting distances, and city design, the French are better situated to consume fresh breads right after consuming them. Cheaper bread alternatives, in the U.S., also stem from economics, although this is a long and complicated story. The best salts come from France, for complex but largely economic and geographic reasons. Non-pasteurization makes French butters better, plus French farm subsidies keep many more small farmers in business. This raises price but also improves quality and shortens supply chains. Freezing foods, including dough, is much cheaper in the United States, again for economic reasons. We have a more disperse population and longer supply lines, both of which favor freezing, plus we have much cheaper transport.
Again, I would stress that American bread is getting better and French bread is probably getting worse. We are seeing convergence, though I would not expect this to ever be exact.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Mar 20, 2006 9:14:38 AM
Isn't the main difference in the Eiffel Tower, boulevards and l'Arc de Triomphe? Perception of food always depend on the environment. The best Thai restaurant in Europe won't give you the experience of simple Phad Thai in a seaside restaurant after a day of great scuba diving. Quality of food alone doesn't guarantee the full thing.
Posted by: PK at Mar 20, 2006 9:31:48 AM
I too have a french friend thinking about opening up a bakery over here. He's a boulanger, not a patissier, but even so, he thinks he would have to import the butter to make anything close to his croissants. Second, in addition to the supply problems above, french white flour is considerably different, more bran-y, than american white flour. A few american bakers try to mill their own, but it's still not any good. And I don't think we should entirely discount savoir faire. To some extent, there are plenty of things that differ in quality based purely on geographical spread. Take carpets, for example. A wool rug made in a Iranian village is better than an imitation iranian rug made of wool in the same way in an Indian village. So if we're not able to attract the french bakers, then maybe that's why we don't have good french bread.
By the way, it's all personal taste, but I'd trade all our muffins and scones and doughnuts and fry breads and everything else for good baguettes and croissants. Oh well.
Posted by: R at Mar 20, 2006 9:35:05 AM
I always thought it was the water. But the trade-offs staleness speed and taste wasn't something I've considered, that rings true, as do comments about supply chain differences For example, our flour might be milled slightly differently to say last longer rather than make better bread. nevertheless, I doubt that butter explains the baguette, as they aren't made with any butter.
Do you think there are objective criteria like springiness, crispiness, size of bread holes, and aroma that could be objectively ensured and therefor compared? I'd be curious how much perception rather than reality made a difference.
Posted by: OneEyedMan at Mar 20, 2006 9:43:17 AM
Perhaps output control is more important than input control. French consumers are choosy, while American consumers expect and get less. Competition does the rest.
Posted by: Dan K at Mar 20, 2006 9:44:46 AM
Not all recipes are in the public domains. There are real researches to invent new flours mixes, and the discoveries are either licensed to individual bakery (the "bannette", the "festivalel") or the exclusive competitive advantage of a chain ("Paul" for instance).
Posted by: Alexis [french] at Mar 20, 2006 9:55:53 AM
It appears to me that Tom and Cannon are on the right track. This is a demand-side issue. I don't know if a better educated consumer would solve the problem, though, or if it really is a problem at all. As was noted, good French croissants and baguettes are delicious, but have other qualities besides taste that, depending on your lifestyle, might make them a second choice even if they were widely available in the U.S.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Mar 20, 2006 10:02:12 AM
Substantially OT opening comment: congratulations, GMU, on making it to the sweet 16!
As for the quality of breads in the U.S. versus France, perhaps in addition to quality differences in material inputs mentioned above, a significant gap in quality of labor inputs might be a contributing factor as well. I live in the center of Wegmans' universe (greater Rochester, NY) and have witnessed their attempts to produce world class breads. That includes buying recipes from abroad and from locally-renowned specialty shops (e.g. sandwich roll bakers). Great in theory, but when executed by 16-year olds whose other options included working at Home Depot or McDonalds the result is not entirely unexpected. Just speculating, but were the demand for high quality breads sufficient to support highly trained labor we might see a greater proliferation of apprentice bakers and other elements of an artisan workforce that would truly understand the little things that separate good from great.
As for Alex's closing comment about bread and democracy...c'mon, trying to make sense of that analogy gave my (admittedly tiny) brain a severe case of whiplash. Clearly some level of breadmaking artistry is "importable", but the full quality of that artistry seems to be lacking here. Expecting Iraq to develop the BEST (or among the best, anyway) functioning democracy in the world--and to have done so in three years' time--is unrealistic and unfair. Just as Wonder Bread < Wegmans' fococcia < Parisian baguette, so too is brutal dictatorship < (even fledgling) representative government < Finland (or your choice of "best" republican government/democracy). If--yes, if--Iraq ends up in a relative position greater than Saddam, but less than Finland I would think that a success.
Posted by: Steve in NY at Mar 20, 2006 10:03:40 AM
I am perpetually skeptical of arguments that some local
feature--the water, the wheat--is the reason for differences
in quality. Flavor, yes, but objective quality? Baking is an
art but it is also very much a science, and I don't think
there is much about the chemistry and physics of breadmaking
that isn't well understood.
Well-informed consumers is probably the key but I don't see how
information asymmetry ("lemons problem") enters the picture.
Ask for a free sample! I see it more as overlapping distributions.
In France, informed demand has pushed their curve to the right, so
that the probability of finding bread better than the "expected"
quality of U.S. bread approaches 1.
I haven't yet had the pleasure of visiting France so I'll throw this
question out: Are all types of bread uniformly superior, or just the
classically French types? Will I be as floored by the pumpernickel
and the pita as I will the baguette and the pastry?
Posted by: David at Mar 20, 2006 10:15:12 AM
While on a barge cruise on the Central Canal
a few years ago, I ate bread from a number
of bakeries in a number of cities. What
surprised me was the variation from place
to place. Some of the croissants were light,
flaky, buttery, others were denser. Some of the
bread was crusty outside and soft inside, some
was hard all the way through, or had soft
crusts. I suspect some of this is local/regional
variations in taste. Bread in Paris was more
univorm (and better) than in the hinterland.
Posted by: Donald A. Coffin at Mar 20, 2006 10:21:12 AM
Good bread, high unemployment, riots. Poor bread, low unemployment, domestic tranquility.
Which to choose.
you can't enjoy the bread if the rioters have cut off the path to the bakery.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at Mar 20, 2006 10:30:02 AM
My wife has become blessedly fanatical about baking bread. She went so far as to cultivate her own yeast culture. I have no idea how her bread compares to the French product, but it beats any of the artisinal breads I've had. But 9 times out of 10 when I've given some to a friend they complain that the crust is too hard. The only time this didn't happen was with a friend who grew up in Europe - he loved it.
I think a big part of the problem is that Americans expect bread to be soft and innocuous.
Posted by: Todd Fletcher at Mar 20, 2006 10:44:42 AM
I'm an occasional home baker. I've gotten moderately into it now and then, and know there is a serious bread subculture here in America. Read Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" for more info. Also I'm sure there must be economics articles on the rise of artisanal bakers ... and there are artisanal choices at my local (orange county california) supermarkets (and trader joe's).
Posted by: odograph at Mar 20, 2006 10:48:27 AM
