Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

PARIS

Paris names the best baguette in the capital

Weighing in at less than 300 grams and standing under 65 centimetres tall, the heavy weight champion of Paris baguettes was named on Thursday in the Town Hall’s eagerly awaited annual competition. The winner will now bake for the French president for the next year.

Published: 14 March 2014 17:51 CET
Paris names the best baguette in the capital
Paris crowns the best baguette in town. Photo: Jarkko Laine/Flickr

It’s no joke to win the title of the best baguette in the capital of the country that arguably makes the best baguettes in the world, especially since the crown means you will be the presidential palace's official baker for the next year.

And this year the title of the Paris's best baguette went to 24-year-old artisan baker Antonio Teixeira who runs the Boulangerie Aux Délices du Palais, on Boulevard Brune in the 14th arrondissement.

Teixeira beat 186 rivals to the prestigious crown that was judged on an array of criteria ranging from the baguette's appearance, smell and taste,

Though just to get the baguette into the hands of the judges was already a victory of sorts for entrants. Of the initial 187 wanna-be the best baguettes, 50 were disqualified for exceeding the size limit of 55-65 centimetres and the maximum weight of 300 grams.

The ever health conscious French also demanded the bread dough did not contain more than 18 grams of salt per kilo. So for those that made it past preliminaries, all they had to hope for was that the 15-member judging panel liked their produce.

Now in its 20th year, the annual Town Hall battle of the baguettes has already smiled on the bread makers at Aux Délices du Palais. In 1998 Antonio Teixeira's father also walked away with the medal for best baguette.

In addition to getting his name in the paper, Texeira’s victory also meant he will be supplying bread for the kitchen at the presidential Elysée Palace for the next year.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

FRENCH HISTORY

7 wild stories from the Liberation of Paris

Eighty years ago Parisians rose up against their German Nazi occupiers, liberating the French capital on August 25th, 1944 after a wild week of strikes, barricades and street fighting.

Published: 14 August 2024 10:17 CEST
7 wild stories from the Liberation of Paris

The liberation of the city is formally commemorated on August 25th with parades, speeches and wreath-laying – but the uprising against the Nazi occupiers began several days earlier, starting with a strike.

READ ALSO The bloody and chaotic weeks that led to the liberation of Paris

Here’s a look at some key moments from these dramatic days, some tragic, others more joyful.

Shot in 1944, died in 2005

On the morning of August 19th, Parisians first rose up. The police, who had been on strike for four days, reoccupied their HQ.

Police officer Armand Bacquer, 24, was arrested by the Germans and shot by a firing squad with a colleague on the banks of the river Seine.

While his colleague died on the spot, Bacquer, left for dead, was rescued the next day. He was operated on, survived and resumed his job as a police officer. He died in his sleep more than 60 years later in 2005.

Champagne in the park

On August 19th, Madeleine Riffaut who had been arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by the Nazis after killing a junior Nazi officer, was freed.

She was then sent on a mission to intercept a German train as it passed through the Buttes Chaumont park in northeastern Paris. With three comrades she pounded the train with explosives from a bridge over a tunnel, captured 80 German soldiers and then partied on the Champagne and foie gras the Germans were taking home.

“Let us say, we celebrated on that day: it was August 23rd. I was 20,” she said.

Aux barricades

On August 22nd, Parisians responded to the call of resistance leader Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy to go “To the barricades!”

The Parisians, determined to take part in their own liberation, erected a chain of 600 barricades, including paving stones, rails, bathtubs, mattresses, and trees, to block the Germans’ movement.

Sleepless night

“It was only on the evening (of August 24th) around 9:45 pm that the news broke across Paris: at 9:28 pm the first French tank, the Romilly, arrived at the town hall. Everywhere there was an indescribable emotion,” wrote Jean Le Quiller, journalist for the newly-created Agence France- Presse.

“Whole apartment blocks sang the Marseillaise, whole streets applauded in the night… A concert of bells filled the air… bringing tears to the eyes,” he wrote.

As allied troops entered from different sides of Paris, AFP wrote: “Now it is for sure: they are there. Paris will not sleep tonight.”

The next day Colonel Rol-Tanguy accepted the surrender of German General Dietrich von Choltitz, ending four years of occupation.

School battle

On August 25th, Brigadier Pierre Deville, who had just returned from Morocco, called his parents and said: “I’m on my way.”

With his platoon he went to the military school to the west of Paris where the Germans were holed up. It took nearly four hours to neutralise them.

Deville was then shot in the head. It was his 20th birthday.

Fireman’s revenge

On the same day, not far away, fireman Captain Sarniguet climbed the 1,700 steps of the Eiffel Tower.

It was sweet revenge for the man the Nazis had ordered in June 1940 to take down France’s tricolour flag from the top. He put up French flags, cobbled together with low quality dyes and sown in secret by the wives of junior officers.

So the French flag replaced the swastika which had been flying for about 1,500 days. “The only obstacle I met was the wind,” Sarniguet said.

Shooting at de Gaulle

On August 26th, French wartime leader General Charles de Gaulle made a triumphant return from exile in London, parading in liberated Paris. He arrived late for a prayer of praise at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

As he greeted the crowd in the square from an open-topped car, gunfire broke out. He brushed it off and carried on his way. He put it down to a coup by counter-revolutionaries seeking to sow panic and seize power.

The underground bunker from which Resistance leader Colonel Rol-Tanguy directed the battle for the liberation of Paris is now a museum – the Musée de la Libération Leclerc Moulin – which is highly recommended to anyone interested in French history of this period. 

Why you really should visit France’s WWII resistance museum

SHOW COMMENTS