A French bakery in Breton has invented the folded baguette as a way for bikers to avoid breaking their bread and getting crumbs in their bags.
After a young trainee baker said his biker father found it difficult to carry a baguette, the Le Darz boulangerie where he works in Landernau, Finistère, has started selling this folded version.
The bent baguette du motard (translated as biker baguette) is folded in two before baking so it can be easily slid into a backpack.
Local bikers and cyclists have welcomed the new baguette as it avoids tipping crumbs out of the bottom of the backpack, as would happen if a normal baguette were simply broken in half.
Speaking to British Baker, bakery co-owner Muriel Le Darz said: “My husband [Nicolas Le Darz], who is a biker himself, was very taken by the idea. The advantages include that the baguette fits into a backpack and there are no crumbs to empty out. Also, it does not dry out.”
The bakery is now making around 50 of the ‘biker baguettes’ a day, said Muriel. Although she admitted that the process was time-consuming, she said there was no real limit on how many the bakery could make.
A Facebook post made by the bakery quickly went viral, and a baker in Switzerland has already been in touch wanting to make his own. Another bakery Pains & Kouign in Quimper was told jokingly on Facebook that they were welcome to make the folded baguette, but they would have call it by another name.
The baguette du motard is priced at €1 (five centimes dearer than a straight baguette in the same bakery). When asked about the price difference between the straight and the folded baguettes, bakery owner and baker Nicolas Le Darz said: “Imagine bending 100 baguettes – that takes time!”
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