Pantin, France — It has seemingly been with humanity forever and a star of the staple foods. Bread was one of the first baked items in the world and it remains with us today. In France where once only the baguette was the leading star of the show, new loaves, often in the round, have been appearing in bread bakeries for the past 10 years or so. While they may never de-throne the baguette, their popularity is growing. Witness the Bread Festival at the Cité Fertile of Pantin that was held in the Parisian suburb of Pantin on the eastern edge of town for the successful second time this year on June 18 and 19. It is one of many breads festival held in France in late spring and early summer. The bread-filled event featured an outdoor bread market, a spot to trade leavens, millers for the Greater Paris region is a hot bed of art and craft flour millers and mills. There were bread baking workshops for children and adults, local bread bakers and wood fire bread ovens, including one open to anyone who had made their dough at home and wanted to bake it in a wood fired oven. Round tables and special guests, including Cornell professor Steven L. Kaplan regarded as being perhaps the only historian of French bread in the world, rounded out the program. Meanwhie the Cité Fertile, literally the Fertile Place, is an ongoing project revolving around the transition ecologic with activities, markets centered on the sustainable programs, food trucks, a beer garden and spaces devoted to biodiversity which will remain at its current location until October of 2022.
©The Gourmet Gazette
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