If there is one thing French people are really serious about, it is most likely bread.
Baking is almost an art in France. The baguette has even been granted World Heritage Status by UNESCO.
For Parisian bakers, the top honour is to win the Best Paris Baguette Award.
The 2025 competition featured 187 bakers from the French capital. Their creations were judged by a jury made up of Deputy Paris Mayor Nicolas Bonnet-Oulaldj, representatives of major professional federations, journalists and four randomly selected Parisians.
Judges of this 32nd edition assessed the competing baguettes based on five criteria: appearance, taste, baking quality, crumb and honeycombing.
This year’s lucky winners are Mickaël Reydellet and Florian Bléas, of the aptly-named La Parisienne boulangerie.
Reydellet created his first shop in 2006 and now manages nine bakeries, seven of them in Paris and two in his native Normandy.
“I'm very proud of the teams, because behind this competition is the day-to-day work of the whole staff, and this is not to be overlooked”, he told Euronews Culture.
Reydellet had already won the contest in 2016. In the past nine years, he worked endlessly to improve his product, despite external challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
“Wheat harvests change each year. We have to adapt our recipes each time to take this into account ”, he explained. “That's the art of baking.”
Like every recipient of the Best Paris Baguette prize, Reydellet and Bléas will have the privilege of delivering their bread to the Élysée Palace during a year.
But for him, the French President is a client like any other.
“It’s always very interesting to be able to go into the Élysée Palace and serve the most prestigious tables. But we take great care over every single one of our products”, Reydellet said.
“Whether it's the President or just another client, we really try to do our job well, and that's what pays off.”
Artisans at La Parisienne are no strangers to awards. Reydellet's colleague Mathieu Leveque also won the Best Paris Pastry prize this year, and Aziz Boussaidi earned second place at the contest for the best croissant in the region.
After completing its own independent tasting, Euronews Culture can say that Bléas and Reydellet's baguette is a worthy winner.
It also largely passes the "Ratatouille" test. As explained by the character of Colette in the 2007 animated Pixar film, a good bread can be recognised by the way its crust sounds.
La Parisienne's baguette offers a "symphony of crackle. Only great bread sounds this way.”
