Paris (AFP)

They arrive from the four corners of Paris by motorbike, bicycle, van, drop off their still warm baguettes upstairs, with their names in a closed white envelope, then rush back to their bakeries to resume work.

After the ratings were shared, the winner was proclaimed Friday evening: it is Makram Akrout, from the bakery "Les boulangers de Reuilly", in the 12th arrondissement.

For the 42-year-old craftsman, including 19 years in France after arriving from Tunisia, "it is the harvest of these years of experience".

"I am very proud," Akrout told AFP.

"I have to be up to the task, with all the people who are going to come here to taste the best baguette in Paris," explains the one who ranked 10th in 2017, then 6th in 2018. To welcome his new customers, he is thinking about exceptionally open on Sunday.

Some 173 bakers were trying this year to win the grand prize for the best baguette in the city of Paris, out of the 1,107 artisans in the capital, the cradle of the baguette.

In the offices of the Grand Paris bakers' union, in the heart of the capital, the baguettes are received and then anonymized under a number.

They are then tasted and then rated by a jury of 12 professionals and residents according to five criteria: visual appearance, smell, cooking, honeycombing of the crumb, and of course the taste.

Each baguette must be "traditional", weigh between 264 and 314 grams, and measure between 55 and 70 cm.

"Today is an extraordinary time to bake a beautiful bread. No humidity in the air, it is not too hot: we will have a good taste," predicts Franck Thomasse, the president of the union.

"Today it has to be perfection."

The prize is a "coronation" and "recognition of know-how", emphasizes Franck Thomasse.

Because the variables to be controlled are multiple: time of pushing of the dough, of cooking, but also "outside temperature, of the water, of the oven, of the dough ...", he lists.

Franck Thomasse, president of the bakers' union and member of the jury, inhales the smell of a baguette during the competition for the best baguette in Paris in April 2019 ALAIN JOCARD AFP / Archives

“There were several years when it was the 18th arrondissement that won. Bakers said:“ The water has something to do with it! ”But to believe him, only the knack counts.

In addition to the prize, Mr. Akrout won the right to supply the Elysée Palace with baguettes for one year.

"I'm going to prepare for that," he apprehends.

For 6 months in a new store, he hopes to "increase turnover by 30 or 40%", and plans to hire to meet the demand.

© 2021 AFP