Choosing an ideal bakery location is becoming more and more trouble than it’s worth. A deluge of TikToks and various recommendations from your hipster friends will tend to leave you confused and hungry. Luckily for French President Emmanuel Macron, all he has to do is open his door every morning to get the best bread in Paris.
Who delivers that bread, however, will change hands when judges award this year’s prize for one of the French capital’s fiercest gastronomic competitions.
Xavier Netry, who runs the Boulangerie Utopie, was crowned winner of the 31st edition of the Grand Prix Paris Baguette.
The bakery, located in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, beat 172 competitors to win this year’s coveted prize.
For Netry, 37, it is recognition for a job he says he has been doing since his early teens.
“I have been a baker for 25 years. And I said to myself that it would be good to have recognition and today it happened so I’m very happy about it”, Netry said AP News.
Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and his deputy Emmanuel Grégoire praised this year’s winner on social networks. Hidalgo will present the prize to Netry on May 7, the day of the Bread Festival in Paris.
TikTokers have already started flooding the bakery, suggesting that Netry will need to increase its supplies more than those needed for the 30 additional baguettes that will feed Macron and his staff each day.
Best baguette
Awarded by a jury who blind tastes a stack of baguettes from the city’s best bakeries, the competition inspires fierce competition, innovation and experimentation.
The eight judges, made up of six Parisians chosen at random, two professionals and an assistant, determine the best baguette based on five criteria: cooking, taste, crumb, cellular structure and appearance.
Bakers tend to use sourdough rather than yeast to make their dough rise. The natural fermentation ingredient, a mixture of bread and water, makes the bread more difficult to perfect than with dry yeast, but it is generally much tastier.
Sourdough often gives its bakers the opportunity to make more varied breads, which has allowed competitors in the Grand Prix de la Baguette to push the limits to stand out.
“Every baker has his or her secret, whether in the choice of flour or in the fermentation process. Even sourdough can contain unexpected ingredients, such as orange or grape juice, to enrich the taste,” explains Adeline Chazelle, from the Syndicat des Boulangers du Grand Paris. Going out in Paris.
Bread fit for a president
Netry will have to get used to a new schedule after winning this year’s top prize.
His reward is the opportunity to deliver fresh baguettes every morning to the official residence of French President Emmanuel Macron, the Élysée. He also received a salary of €4,000 ($4,290).
Last year’s winner, Tharshan Selvarajah of Levain des Pyrénées, delivered 30 baguettes every morning at 6:30 a.m. to Macron’s home.
“God has given us all different hands,” said Selvarajah, who immigrated to France from Sri Lanka when he was 21. say it New York Times.
“My mother’s chicken curry and my wife’s chicken curry may have the same chicken in it, but they don’t taste the same,” he said. “God gave me the hands to make the best baguette in France!” I never get mad at the flour when I knead the dough.
However, as the first non-French winner of the prize, Selvarajah felt like he was constantly looked down upon by his peers because of his immigrant status.
“It’s not pleasant, but I don’t care,” he told the Times.
