A French table without bread is incomplete… blasphemous… naked. All along the socioeconomic ladder, across lines of gender, age, political persuasion, bread is the common denominator in the collective French culinary consciousness. Visit any French city, town, or fiefdom, and just watch. Especially around mealtimes, you will observe little old ladies, scrawny adolescents on skateboards, and fathers with strollers alike with a baguette in hand as they totter, skate, and walk back to their homes. Forgetting to buy bread when having guests over is unthinkable. Come to think of it, forgetting to buy bread is unthinkable. Period.
In the small village where we live, the baker (his nickname is Zézette) actually drives around delivering bread every day. The first time Nico’s mother asked me to “go get the bread,” I assumed that she wanted me to drive to a nearby bakery.
“No,” she said, “it’s next to the mailbox.”
I stared at her, “Next to the mailbox?”
“Yes,” she repeated, as she busily whipped together some eggs for her quiche, “right next to the mailbox.”
Now, I speak French fluently, but was having some trouble processing the message. As I walked up the steep driveway to the mailbox, I kept wondering what I would find. And there, next to the mailbox, was another container that I must have seen a thousand times, but had never noticed: a tall plastic tube with a plastic lid. I certainly would never have thought it was for bread. I warily approached the tube as though it might contain a bomb or a cobra and gingerly lifted the lid. And there, inside, sat two baguettes. As I triumphantly descended the drive brandishing the two baguettes, I couldn't help but marvel at the Frenchness of it all and think that whoever wrote the Lord's Prayer would certainly approve.
