The Right Bakery

"Are you sure you have the right bakery?"

That was Sithamparappillai Jegatheepan's response when he got the call. He'd just won the Grand Prix de la Baguette - Paris's most prestigious bread competition.

His baguette would be delivered to the Élysée Palace for a year.

Jegatheepan is from Sri Lanka. So was last year's winner, Tharshan Selvarajah. Previous years: Algeria, Tunisia, West Africa.

France's most sacred bread tradition. Dominated by immigrants working bakeries on the fringes of the city.

The competition is almost comically constrained. Four ingredients only: flour, water, yeast, salt. Strict specs for length, weight, salt content. Thirty baguettes were disqualified before tasting - wrong size, wrong weight.

One baker tried a single long score instead of the traditional five diagonal cuts.
The judges were displeased.

And yet.

The winners aren't always the ones who grew up with baguettes. They came from somewhere else and had to learn every step.

Not read about it. Not watch someone else do it. Actually make the bread - over and over - until the knowledge moved from their heads to their hands.

It may not feel like it, but being on the outside can be an advantage.

This doesn't just apply to bread.