Eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart
The Bible
In this age of ever growning supermarkets and giant food producers, it is a real blessing that you can still find fresh, locally baked bread and pastry in almost every small village in France. The French understand that bread must be fresh from the oven in order to taste really good. Fortunately, the village boulangerie-pâtisseries still seem to be able to compete against the big players. More and more people realise that it is woth paying a little bit more for a higher quaility, handmade product. Altogether there are about 34000 baker and pastry shops in France employing over 140000 persons. They bake more than 10 billion baguettes every year.
Denmark is another country that can take pride in its bread culture. There you can find a great number of small bakeries which sell newly baked bread - and often also pastry - even on Sunday mornings. My own favourite is Reinh Van Hauen in Copenhagen.
There are probably some other countries that still maintain a good bread tradition, but France and Denmark are the ones I know best from a baking point of view.
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