If you’re ever in search for the heart and soul of Paris, just follow your nose towards the scent of freshly baked bread, warm from the oven. Here’s my experience at Paris’ annual bread festival: La Fête du Pain.
Every May a very special festival is held in front of Notre Dame, Paris‘ annual bread festival: la Fête du Pain. It starts on the day of Saint-Honoré, the patron saint of bakers, and ends the following Sunday. The 12-day festival hosts small bakeries and ovens within dozens of tents and concludes with a mass that takes place inside Notre Dame. Bakers are honored with the very front rows reserved for them and the mass is a veneration of, well bread of course!
At la Fête du Pain, artisan bakers or artisan boulangers showcase their delicacies selected by the French jury for their strict adherence to the standard of making French bread. This festival and competition only brings in the best of the best allowing consumers to stop and taste some of the best delicacies all within just 1,200 meter space.
As you walk from tent to tent, you follow and breathe in the deliciously seductive aroma permeating the air. You can see artisan boulangers at work adding fruit to the pastries, kneading the dough, creating the batter and so forth. I pulled pat from tent to tent, elbowing our way through samples and demonstrations. Who had the best baguette? What delicacies was each of these bakeries making?
We purchased a few morsels here and there. One of the many delicacies we tried were chouquettes. I had never had a chouquette before, but instantly fell in love at la Fête du Pain. Chouquette is a very small and airy pastry covered in pearl sugar. It’s almost like a doughnut, but the inside is empty and airy, not filled with dough. We purchase a few for tasting.
During la Fête du Pain, a prestigious contest is held for the Best French Traditional Baguette. Baguettes are graded on a six point scale, which includes: look, crust (color and crispiness), flavor, crumb (color and honeycombing), chewing, and taste. The bakers demonstrate baguette making techniques that go back to 1120. The winner has the honor of providing the Elysée Presidential Palace with baguettes for a whole year.
In the last few years, la Fête du Pain has invited another country to participate in the competition. In 2019, while I was there, it was Canada. So of course our second delicacy had to be an Ottawa-staple from the Canadian bakery stand. We went with a cinnamon-sugar beaver tail. It looks like a load of bread, but it’s fried and covered in delicious cinnamon. It was mouth-watering and light and airy, like all French pastries!
After we spent an hour stuffing our faces with cinnamon-sugar beaver tails and chouquettes, we continued to walk towards l’Ile de la Cité and Notre Dame. It was by rare chance that we got to enjoy and participate in la Fête du Pain. Not many get the opportunity to coincide their travels with this honorary event! But now that you know about it, make sure to mark your calendars for the upcoming dates in May…it’s a festival you won’t want to miss!
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