French hoard baguette as the whole country on lockdown

As anxious consumers around the world stockpile toilet paper and pasta, the French are thronging to bakeries for baguettes, fearing a shortage of their daily bread as they wait out the coronavirus pandemic in confinement.

This country of 67 million consumes 9 billion long loaves every year, has an annual competition for the best Parisian baguette and a special word for the pointy end people chew off on their way home from a bakery: crouton.

Bakers are among the few essential-service businesses allowed to stay open in France under strict anti-virus confinement measures that took effect on Tuesday.

And bakeries are thriving, with long lines in cities and countrysides alike.

“Our numbers have doubled since Monday,” said Addenour Koriche, sales manager of a bakery attached to a large supermarket north of Paris. “We are now on 800 baguettes per day. Yesterday, for example, we had no baguettes left to sell by 3pm.”

The store normally closes five hours later.

The bakery sported newly applied black lines on its floor, improvised with lengths of tape, to help customers respect the suggested one-meter safety distance to limit spreading the virus that has sickened more than 7,700 people and killed 175 in France.

A brand-new perspex screen shielded the vendor — wearing latex gloves but no face mask, and atypically using tongs to handle the bread — from a steady stream of customers.

“We have people who normally take half a baguette or one baguette per day, who are now taking four or five to freeze in case even stricter confinement measures are announced,” said Koriche.

On Tuesday, France’s labor ministry approved a special waiver allowing bakeries to stay open seven days a week instead of the legal limit of six.

“The waiver will allow the French to buy bread without stress every day,” said Matthieu Labbe of the Federation of Bakeries.

“We’ve seen people come in who want to buy 50 baguettes at a time. There’s something like a psychosis in some people.”

Labbe said people should not worry about supply, even as some bakeries have taken to placing a limit on sales per client. “We have flour, yeast and salt. There is no problem to produce bread.”