overease

So, my first day in Paris I strolled down to the local bakery, bought a "pain de campagne," had a taste, and said to myself "why is it that at any random bakery in France you can get excellent bread, while even in fancy bakeries in the US you can only get halfway decent bread? What is wrong with us?"

Then I got an email from a colleague who stayed in this neighborhood last year mentioning the "two excellent bakeries" down the street. Hm, I thought. Maybe that wasn't just any random bakery.

This was confirmed today when I bought pain de campagne from a different bakery because the first one was closed. Yes--it is crappy.

Hurrah! American products, not quite so dismal compared to France after all.