Renaud

Faced with the alarming disappearance rate of artisan bakeries because of supermarkets and "boulangeries froides" ( traditional-looking bakeries but which buy prebaked bread rather than produce it), laws were passed over ten years ago to protect the artisans and their customers: "pain maison" must be entirely produced on the site, and "pain tradition" limits the ingredients to flour, water, yeast, salt, malt and fava bean flour. Your are right, two french laws changes many things. It’s the “Décret N°93-1074” of September 13th in 1993 and Loi n° 98-405 of may 25th,1998 which specify : 1 - A “boulanger” knead, shape and bake the bread he sales, where he sales it. If you don’t do that, you are not a boulanger and your shop is not a “Boulangerie”( You can put “Pain, croissant or sandwichs” on the front of your shop but not “Boulangerie”). If so, your bread is “pain maison”. If you use frozen-prebaked pasts for your bread, you are not a boulangerie. We call then ‘points chauds”. 2 - A boulanger can make “pain de tradition française”. It's a "appellation contôlée". For so, you have to use flour, salt, water and “levure de panification” (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Only additives are fava bean flour (2 %), la soya flour (0.5 %) and wheat malt flour (0.3 %). It doesn't look the same : (on the right, bad baguette, on the left, baguette de tradition française.