La Fete Du Pain

Our next adventure, on a rainy Monday, was the annual Paris Fete du Pain, held in the forecourt of the cathedral, which, nowadays, unfortunately, is not very crowded. The Festival of Bread occurs in several tents, where you get to watch the judging, the making of bread items by master bakers and their students, and also buy some of the goodies. Having doubled or quadrupled our bread intake, particularly baguettes, since returning to Europe, we felt we needed to learn more, especially yours truly, who needs to better distinguish the €.45 cheapies from Franprix from Vicki's preferred €1.30 traditional artisanal type. Oh, I made a couple lengthy videos of the action, which will appear on my YouTube channel some day.

Front-end of the baking tent

Back-end; of the 30 or so people working there--elder bakers and
students from the various culinary/bakery schools about Paris--we
saw only two females; in most any boulangerie you walk into, the
front-end will be women, the back-end, maybe not

Making croissants; it's all in the wrist action

Love the T-shrt

Spare parts; but as we'll see, these get fed back into the rolling
machine and will come back out as a nice, huge, sheets of dough

Thus

Measure twice; use a cooling rack to make a cutting grid

Cut many times

Assemble and roll; ready for the oven

Having mastered pain au chocolate, we moved on to these guys,
who were making (we learned at great length) apple tartlets

Teacher and student; the student is cutting out the tartlet rounds

Of course there is an MC narrating it all; also cutting up bits of a baguette
for the audience to sample; the whole thing could have used a Noel Fielding, 
I thought

Satisfied customer

I think this is an oven

Huge dough-mixing machine; designed to resemble R2D2

Expert interview

Now the student is piping glops of apple sauce onto the tartlets-to-be

And cutting the (machine-pre-skinned/pre-cored/pre-halved)
apple halves into slices; the teacher also was doing this, his
slices half as thick and twice as quick

Next door, making Eiffel Tower cookies for the tourists

Thus assembled, ready for the oven...one of several trays

Back at the front-end

Of course we bought one; nice shot with the student
baker in the background

Now in the judging tent, where, I think, they are judging best baguette
in France; or possibly somewhere else; the best in Paris turned out to
be a young Indian immigrant in the 20th; our local baker, around the corner,
won 5th

Parthian shot

Takes his baguettes very seriously

Vide Greniers De Printemps: Neighborhood Street Sale

Early in my ramblings in April I had picked up a leaflet advertising a neighborhood street sale in St. Germain, just north of us. From an experience Vicki had on Boulevard Voltaire in 2014, we knew what this was about: a day-long spring cleaning neighborhood street sale, well worth looking into. The one she shopped was just a couple blocks long. But the sale we saw Sunday stretched for 4 or 5 blocks of Boulevard Raspail and several side streets too, and took us a couple hours to cover. It was better than a flea market in that these "yard sales" are mostly families, not the pros, selling, and, although there is a great deal of junk, there are also some pretty interesting things, and probably some serious bargains as well. From an entertainment/amusement perspective, it was one of the better things we've done.

Because of the tax system in France, you can't just open a stand on the street and sell personal stuff. Everything is subject to the value-added tax and relevant documentation and payment of taxes. But neighborhoods can petition their local governments for exemptions, stipulating that they will prohibit the pros from participating. What we saw were mostly families, with maybe a few arguable exceptions. Neighborhood sales like this occur only in the spring and fall. We're already on the look-out for another one this month in our vicinity. What a hoot!

Oh, we did actually buy something, a small used electric space heater, for €4. The heating element doesn't work. How do you say caveat emptor in French? Acheteur mefiez-vous!

Looking south on Boulevard Raspail: a block away is the 1910 art
nouveau Hotel Lutetia, and facing it, across a small park, is the Bon
Marche; not a bad neighborhood by any means; average room rate
at the Lutetia, as I write, is €1,887 per night

Looking north

As we'd discover, you're apt to find most anything

Now on a side street

Most interesting floor lamp ever, so far

Still processing this one

Snails not included

Another side street scene

Serving dish for white asparagus (in season now)

All kinds of innovative display

The only vacant space we saw

Changing tent...we used to have one of those

Lots of kid stuff

Violin not included

Nice rhododendron already blooming...very tempting,
but we didn't think it would pass US Department of
Agriculture inspection

Satisfied customer

Very old canteen

"You want a toe? I can get you a toe..." [running
gag]

"Merry Christmas, Mao" it reads...definitely should have
bought this instead of the heater!