3 Boulangeries – but no baguettes

Wednesday 2nd March

Only in France.  We have three Boulangeries in town, two are very good with excellent bread, a wide selection of different grains and cereals and beautiful patisserie, one is not so good but serviceable if all you want is a baguette or a pain.  Each of the three are open six days and closed for one, so for three days there are only two Boulangeries open.  But surprise surprise, when one bread shop is closed the other two make no extra bread or croissants and run out quite early in the day.  “I have always made 40 baguettes and 20 croissants, I don’t see why I should make any more just because one of the other shops is shut, if people want a baguette they had better come early” – this seems to be the attitude.  But it gets worse.  When one of the three is closed for vacances or refurbishment or any other reason the other two steadfastly refuse to make more bread, and it is only when the town is full and overflowing with tourists do they consider upping production.

But these last two weeks the situation has reached ludicrous proportions.  As if in concert, but I am sure independently arrived at, two of the Boulangeries happen to be closed for the same two weeks, notices duly went up in their windows, as if to warn us of the impending bread shortage, but at least we still had the one (poor but okay in an emergency Boulangerie) open.  Of course no more bread was baked.  What do you think?  We are in France where they wouldn’t see a business opportunity if it jumped up and biffed them on the nez.  And, you guessed, on Monday the sole remaining Boulangerie was closed.  “Well, we always close on a Lundi, you must know that, you can’t expect us to work seven days a week.”  So we had the incredible situation of having three Boulangeries and no baguettes.  Only in France….