TPAYT

Actually all of France.

What do they do with the leftover baguettes from the morning? We've seen bakers take them out of the window/rack and replace with freshly baked baguettes in the late afternoon/evening.

nukesafe

Good question, I'll sign on to hear the answer.

I don't know what they do with them in the States, either. Our local supermarket bakes them daily, but they do not appear outside the bakery section until about 11:30 in the morning. (Silly, as that is much too late for breakfast.) Still, they make for a nice sandwich for lunch. If they don't sell out, those same stale baguettes are still there when the store closes.

It is my understanding that a Frenchman won't eat one that is more than a few hours old, which makes perfect sense to me.

justineparis

Lots of French men eat them the next morning , cut in half and toasted , buttered often dipped in their coffee .

My dad is french and he hated it , but it is very common for those trying to be economical .

WoinParis

Yes Justine but that for sold baguettes. What do the bakers do with ps baguettes indeed ?
Maybe they give them to tramps - I know a lot do actually.

By the way that is the contrary with men : after 50 men get the baker's syndrome :
La brioche s'arrondit et la baguette ramollit.
Ok
I won't say it anymore.

fuzzbucket

Some use them for sandwiches the next day.
Some are more enterprising and make croutons, breadcrumbs or "pouding" - bread pudding.
There are some who sell stale bread at a discount and many now are giving donations of bread and pastries to food banks and people who are hungry.

I know one very decent baker which unfortunately does sell day old baguettes as fresh, the next morning. I think this is reprehensible.

bilboburgler

Ok, customers reheat them for later meals. Bakeries tend to compost/use for pig feed. Selling day-old would work exactly once as customers would not put up with it and I suspect it infringes some 1910ish law.

Given that the things were basically brought about to ensure a basic loaf at a fixed price for the French peasant at the start of last centuary, they have done well. I just wish they were better, in my experience French bread is some of the worst in Europe (beaten only by some Italian, though even that is beginning to turn the corner) but, the croissant is a fine product. It is almost like northern European bread is wonderful and the further south you go it just gets worse and worse.

bvlenci

At home, I grind hard bread into bread crumbs.

I agree that much French and Italian bread is mediocre.

justineparis

Ah.. but a good baguette is heaven.. and I love that.. never buy a baguette from a grocery store.

Christina

I think this is the same question as for any kind of food--what do stores or vendors do with it when it is old or bruised or damaged? Usually, they dump it.

You might want to view the Anges Varda film Les Glaneurs which was excellent and covers a lot of this situation, people gleaning food and other items from discarded items. I remember there was one young man who was a teacher in a homeless shelter who gleaned from the open-air markets after they closed down (apparently a lot of them leave some excess stuff behind, although I seem to recall it was mainly vegetables/fruits it showed).

And I know last year or so, they passed a law in France that stores had to turn over goods to food banks or something, instead of dumping stuff in the trash. But I'm not sure that included fresh food or not.

I imagine most bakeries try to make sure they don't bake a lot of excess baguettes, they should have some idea of about how many they sell each day, and you often can find them out at the end of the day of certain products.

But some sell them to discount stores, I think. HEre is a story about one such day-old bread store in Nimes
http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-prem...12-2397329.php

bilboburgler

A true baguette sold at 8 am is not fresh enough to eat at 12

The term dump suggests an infinite container, the planet is only so big and products have to be converted into something

justineparis

Compost converted into soil..

PalenQ

I was told that they make pudding out of them - bread pudding made into pie like slices- cheap.

At home my French friends make Trompez au lait (sp?) - bread and milk soup the next days.

No one I know throws out day-old baguettes.

WoinParis

Trompez au lait - never heard of it - but I'm not French.
Yet it doesn't sound right.

bvlenci

In Italy, they use hard bread to make various kinds of soups.

I make bread pudding, both a sweet one with sugar and raisins, and a salted one, with cheese.That's an American habit I brought here. But I also use the old bread to make bread crumbs, which are used a lot in Italian cooking.

Pvoyageuse

Croissants, pains au chocolat etc are often sold the next day at half price. Stale bread is sold in big sacks to people who raise horses, hens, duck etc....
At home we make bread crumbs, pudding as PalenQ writes, stuffing for meat pies or petits farcis, and no, you don't throws out bread at least in the older generation. It is considered almost a sin !

PalenQ

Pvoy - Trompez au lait - this is what my French ex-wife called the old pain she put into bowls of hot milk and ate either in morning or at the 4pm snack time.

Ever heard of it -I may be butchering the spelling.

anyone heard of trompez au lait?

Merci

kerouac

tromper = deceive, cheat
tremper = dunk, dip, drench

bvlenci

In English it's called Milquetoast.

PalenQ

tremper = dunk, dip, drench

OK voila- Tremper au lait

SylvieD

You can make "Pain Perdu" = Lost Bread = French Toast