Some vocabulary to get you started.

• Le pain = bread
• La boulangerie = bread shop
• Le boulanger = baker
• La pâtisserie = pastry shop
• Le pâtissier = pastry cook
• Une pâtisserie = a pastry
• Miam miam! Yummo!

Bread is a staple food in France. The typical loaf of French bread is called "une baguette", which means stick or wand. It is about 60 cm long and weighs 500 grammes.

French people like their bread crusty, and this shape of loaf offers the maximum amount of crust to bread. You can see in the photo that bread comes in many shapes, sizes and textures in France.

Here is a typical French breakfast - un petit déjeuner typique.

• du pain - bread, sliced and all ready to make into "une tartine", or what we would call bread and jam.
• du beurre - butter
• de la confiture - jam
• une pâtisserie - a pastry as a special treat.
• du café au lait (coffee) or un chocolat chaud (hot chocolate) to complete the meal!

Here are some of the main types of bread that you might see on sale.

French bread contains no fat, so it becomes stale very quickly. This is why people visit the local "Boulangerie" (hot bread shop) at least once a day. Bread is eaten at all three meals, and forms the most important part of breakfast.

When in France, you will often see people riding bikes, mopeds or motorbikes with baguettes strapped to the back, or walking the streets with their baguette under their arm racing to get home for lunch at midday.

Handy hints for eating bread!

• In a family, bread is passed around the table. You are often expected to just tear a piece off the end to eat.
• If you cut French bread, it is good manners to slice it on the diagonal. Avoid slicing it through vertically, unless you are making a sub-type sandwich.
• It's considered good luck if you end up with the knobble at the end of the bread. (Personally, I think this is a way of persuading people to eat it!)

Did you know...?

The French word "croissant" means "crescent" in English. Here is how this yummy pastry got its shape and its name!

This delicious breakfast treat was invented about three hundred years ago, not in France, but in Austria. The armies of the Ottoman Empire or Turkey (whose symbol was a crescent) were attacking Vienna, the capital of Austria.

In a hard fought battle, the Austrian armies defeated the forces of the Ottoman Empire. To celebrate, the French chef employed by the Emperor of Austria decided to make a pastry in the shape of a crescent. When this was eaten, it would become a symbol of the way in which the Austrian forces had consumed their enemies. On his eventual return to France, the chef introduced the pastry to the French who immediately made it very popular.