Bodian poses in his bakery ‘Grenier a pain’ (The Bread Loft) in the 18th Arrondissment of Paris. Bodian won the 21st edition of the ‘Best baguette of Paris’ contest.
DPA/Paris
Senegal-born baker Djibril Bodian is to deliver baguettes to the Elysee Palace in the morning after he was recognised as Paris’s best producer of the traditional French loaf, the city’s mayor said yesterday.
Bodian, who has a bakery called Le Grenier a Pain in the Montmartre neighbourhood of Paris, had already received the honour in 2010.
“My father is in the business, so I was hanging out in bakeries already when I was very small,” he told L’Express newspaper after his last win.
Good baguettes, he explained, “have to be well cooked, with a nice fine crust and a maximum d’alveolage – which is to say, large and regular holes – and a very good smell”.
All Parisian bakers can compete for the title, which is held for a year.
The deciding jury has 15 members, who rate the baguettes based on the cooking, the taste, the crumb, the odour and the look.
The baguettes have to conform to a set of standards, such as having a length of between 55cm and 65cm, weighing between 250g and 300g, and having a salt content of 18g per kilogram of flour.
The process is “no secret”, Bodian had said.
What’s required, Bodian said, is “a very good sense of observation”.