Every year for the past 31 years, the Syndicat des Boulangers-Pâtissiers du Grand Paris has put the city’s best artisan bakers to the test to determine who churns out the best baguette of them all. Baguettes are judged according to five precise criteria: baking, taste, crumb, honeycombing, and appearance to select the winning baker. Products must measure between 50 and 55 cm in length, weigh between 250 and 270 grams, and have a salt content of 16.8 grams per kilo of flour.
Xavier Netry, the longtime bread master at Utopie, one of the bakeries you’ve read about in this newsletter many times (also home to my favorite croissant!), and all-around lovely human being, beat 172 other bakers to take home the grand prize. After five hours of tasting and deliberation, he won a 4,000 euro prize while Utopie has now become the official supplier to the kitchens at the Elysées Palace for one year.
I get bread from Utopie at least once a week but I’m typically drawn to Xavier’s rustic loaves and specialty breads—sencha tea with puffed rice, is a standout, but he also comes out with limited edition options nearly every weekend that are always interesting. Whenever I’ve spoken to him about his breads he insists the secret sauce to all of it is a very good sourdough starter, long fermentation, and watchful baking. His love of baking certainly doesn’t hurt.
For more on Xavier, you can hear my conversation with him in this episode of The New Paris Podcast, below. It was recorded live at The Red Wheelbarrow when I was in conversation with the cookbook author Laurel Kratochvila, co-owner of Fine Bagels in Berlin, who featured Xavier in her book New European Baking. The back-and-forth with Xavier was in French, but I recap it in English at the end.
Bon appétit!
So cool! A local winner!
Well now I know where I’ll be going next time I’m in Paris!