Coin-op bread-making machine at late-night French convenience store

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David Lebovitz, an American living in France, describes the automated French bread making coin-op machines at his local late-night convenience store, a shop whose clientèle are said to be les célibataires (celibates singles).

But everyone, single or otherwise, has the right to fresh bread, even if they have to suffer the indignity of buying five leaves of lettuce with a plastic packet of dressing and calling it "Salad for One." And when I saw this giant machine, the size of a small truck, right in the store, I had to try it out. You drop in a €1 coin, wait about 60 seconds for the bread to bake, then it cools the bread for another 30 seconds. A touch screen lets you monitor the progress every second of the way. It also lets you know the ingredients&Mdash;but would it kill them to put in a window? I'd love to what's going on in there.

Then it's ready and you slide the door open and pull out your presumably fresh, hot baguette du jour. I won't comment on the taste or texture, but I don't think they're going to put any bakeries out of business soon.

The French Bread Machine (via Super Punch)

• [seyo]

  Cory, you misspelled David Lebovitz’s name.

• [zapan]

  I’m french and this is just an automatisation of the same scam you can now find at every street corner : a “point chaud/sandwicherie” (hot spot/sandwich shop) basically an oven run by two underpaid students, filled every 15 minutes with frozen pre-baked industrial loafs.
  A local law forbids them to bear the name “boulangerie” (baker) hence the “hot spot” and other “fresh bread” signs. (in case you didn’t understand, the macine is next to the bakery because the baker applied for his annual paid holydays).

  That type of bread that french call “surgelé” (frozen) or “industriel” (industrial) tastes like straw (because it is baked two times too fast) and is dry half a day after purchase (very low moisture level). Customers usually eat it warm, wich hides the true taste of it.

  The machine is just a fridge coupled with an oven, the baguette you order is just thawed, not baked.

  • [SamSam]

    Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the title of this blog post will change to the more accurate “coin-op old-bread reheating machine,” since it’s far more fun to pretend that the French have developed fancy maker-bot machines that create bread from scratch and then bake them in 60 seconds… ;)

    • [Ugly Canuck]

      That the French have failed to do so makes me very very sad.
      C’est tragique, c’est triste.

• [Anonymous]

  In Italian airports there are Pizza baking machines. 5 Euros for a Margherita. If interesting, I can post photos.

  • [Andor]

    Antonio Margheriti!!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF-20HXIhJI

• [pentomino]

  Unless the language has changed since I studied French, “célibataire” just means “unmarried”

  • [PaulR]

    Yeah, some people might argue that les mariés are though suffering from célibat…

    My guess: nearly frozen half-backed baguettes, browned in a high IR oven.

    Or, given the size of the machine, there are a bunch of very short boulangers in there…

  • [Anonymous]

    I don’t understand the difference between single or unmarried.
    I have lived in Paris for 30 years and am happily both.

• [PaulR]

  Note to self: Always hit Preview first…

  “Yeah, some people might argue that les mariés are often those suffering from célibat…”

  • [Anonymous]

    There are men who can’t eat without their baguette -frozen half baked or otherwize.

• [IanKoro]

  Another cool thing tainted by Comic Sans.

• [Stooge]

  Célibataires = singles

• [rebdav]

  Much like the chips/fries vending machines I see that unfreeze and cook with IR in 30 sec to a minute.

• [SamSam]

  Um, if it’s “baking” it in 60 seconds, then it’s not baking it. And, contrary to the maker-bot-like allusions in the post’s title, it’s almost certainly not “making” it either.

  In 60 seconds it’s probably just reheating bread that was put there that morning. Or, worse, it’s heating frozen bread that was put there last week.

  This is probably why the machine has no windows. It would destroy the fantasy if you just saw a frozen baguette thrown into an oven.

  I guess it’s possible that the machine is doing the forming of long baguettes and slashing them perfectly and everything else, even though those baguettes look very human-made. But still, the bread is not being baked while you wait. It’s being reheated.

• [tyger11]

  Mon dieu! Sacré bleu! À la carte! Zis is an outrage! Strike! Strike! Strike!

  • [SomeGuy]

    Beat me to it.

    I’ve seen these machines but never tried the bread. All they’re doing is heating up a pre-baked baguette that’s kept in cold storage – not necessarily frozen solid. Don’t know how often the machines are restocked so I can’t attest to the freshness of the product but it may be a tad bit better than whatever’s left in stock and sitting out on the shelves all day. So for supermarket bread at least, it may be the better bet for a late-night purchase.

• [YarbroughFair]

  Subway got caught in an advertising play on words that is also being used here. “Fresh baked”, what does it mean? Subway did exactly the same thing this machine does, it just finishes the process, I think Subway called it 80/20 or something like that, 80% done, 20% to completion. So the process is taken as far as the legal definition of “fresh baked” and shortened it by 30 seconds, simple, easy, totally fucked up. The machine is simply a huge toaster!

  History:

  Pre 2004 the American Bakers Association petitioned the F.D.A to allow the word “fresh” on bread stating that not allowing this put the industry at a disadvantage. The FDA rules made solid sense, if any preservative are used to maintain shelf life the item could not be considered “fresh”. The A.B.A demands that it be allowed to call its product fresh since the F.D.A has not defined the transition from “fresh” to non fresh or how long something can remain fresh or the period of time something remains fresh.

  Today: “Fresh” with certain foods, is considered a “sensory modifier” meaning it “could” smell fresh, taste fresh, feel fresh, look fresh, and even hear fresh like thumping a watermelon. And this is the case with bread.

• [SomeGuy]

  oops…my comment was meant to be in reply to SamSam @8

• [Anonymous]

  Here in Belgium even the smallest villages usually have a bread machine, though it doesn’t bake (or even pretend to bake) the bread — it’s usually just a vending machine on the street corner with a shelter over it. In some places you can get sandwiches and other snacks out of the machines. I have also seen machines that vend milk, potatoes, or mushrooms. After all, you never know when you’ll need an oyster mushroom at 2am….

• [Anonymous]

  As someone who regularly eats out of U.S. convenience stores I can honestly say this beats the hell out of a bag of Fritos. I’m really envious if the store sells anything resembling cheese.

• [KeithIrwin]

  Hypothetically, you could probably make a pretty good machine similar to this which stores parbaked bread and just does the final bake. But that final bake would take more than just two minutes, so I’m sure that they aren’t doing that. Too bad. I’m sure that it would be an improvement even though the wait would be longer.

• [Anonymous]

  What’s going on in that box?
  My guess, in a minute and a half you could warm up a baguette and then cool it to warm and Voila!, fresh (?) bread.