Baguette Vending Machines in the Touraine Loire Valley

Increasingly, as the population in rural France ages and declines, village bakeries are struggling. Yet French law demands that everyone have access to fresh bread. When a bakery closes, often when the baker retires and no one takes the business over, small villages can be left with no supplier of bread in the community

A typical village bakery employs about six people, four of whom are apprentices. Becoming a baker is the most popular apprenticeship in France. But young bakers don’t necessarily want to strike out on their own, which is why village bakeries are at risk when the owner retires. Young bakers these days generally prefer to be salaried workers, and will choose to work in a bakery factory or supermarket bakery rather than risk being self-employed business owners

In the past what would have happened is one of two alternatives. Either a bakery from a nearby village that had a delivery round would extend their range and deliver to households in the next municipality. Or another shop in the village that had lost its bakery would act as a depôt du pain, selling bread from the bakery in a neighbouring village for a small premium. Nowadays though fewer and fewer bakeries do house to house deliveries, and many small villages do not have any shops left

The solution for many small local authorities today is to arrange a partnership with a bakery in a nearby village and to install a baguette vending machine. The neighbouring bakery replenishes the stock a couple of times a day and the bread costs maybe 5 cents more than if you bought it in the shop, around €1 or €1.10. The vending machines take cash and/or card and give change. One of our local bakeries invested not only in a vending machine for a nearby village, but also in an electric delivery vehicle, to make sure they were being as ecologically friendly as possible.

They become an informal ‘office water cooler’ style meeting place, where locals gather for a chat and to pick up the daily bread. I’ve noticed that the mayor of small communities can frequently be found lurking about the baguette machine. They are making themselves available to residents, and gathering intel. The baguettes on offer are the type known as tradition. A baguette de tradition is an artisanal product with ingredients and method of production strictly defined by law. It is not an industrial product, but made fresh and from scratch on a daily basis. The ingredients are wheat flour, salt, water and a little bakers yeast. No 'bread improvers' or other additions are allowed (except a very small percentage of soy or lentil flour). A poolish (pre-ferment) is made, then the dough is given minimal kneading (just enough to incorporate the remaining flour and water). The dough is set in a proving chamber to rise. It is knocked back and allowed to rise four times before being divided and shaped by hand into baguettes. Then it is laid out on undulating linen sheets known as toiles de couches to rise before baking on the floor of the oven. Frozen dough may not be used. This seemingly old fashioned approach is to ensure quality, taking time so the yeast provides leavening, flavour and modifies the flour into a loaf that has become legendary worldwide.

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 UPDATE -- RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

chm -- thanks for the links. You are quite right about baguettes. They are really a post-WWII thing, a response to the demand for fresh crunchy bread, which was really a change in fashion.