[yodsanklai]

> so you really tend not to get bad French staples at very many places--even if it's a random touristy place.

French here! I'm usually not that picky with croissants, but much more with other patisseries, such as eclairs. It's a bit harder to find good patisseries, and the quality doesn't always correlate with the price. Even in what looks like legit "patisseries artisanales", you can find eclairs which are basically frozen industrial stuff and sell for 3.50+ euros, which I think is a scam.

That being said, yes, I think you can normally find decent bread, croissants and patisseries (and cheese) pretty much everywhere in France.

On a side note, I lived in London and I noticed that Sainsbury made good bread and croissants, for much cheaper than the fancy "French" bakeries.

[mc32]

Maybe I'm wrong but I had the impression that in France pastry shops had legit pastry chefs who had to go through apprenticeships whereas in America for example, pastry shops give a baker a recipe to follow and that's pretty much it (for the ones that bake in-house I mean)

[BowBun]

It varies. Your neighborhood bakery/pastry shop may have a baker that learned from their parent(s). Or it could be a higher-end shop with a trained patisserie chef. Or it could be a 'front' bakery that receives their daily shipment from a regional factory that makes them by hand or by machine.

[yodsanklai]

> France pastry shops had legit pastry chefs who had to go through apprenticeships

It depends. Nowadays it's not always the case. To reduce costs, apparently quite a lot of shops sell industrial pastries. For bread, there's a label apparent on the shop that certifies whether the bread is made in house ("artisan boulanger"), but it's not true for pastries. It's hard to say exactly what is made in-house without asking.

[magixx]

For simpler items like croissants, IMO the recipe and following directions is all that matters. I've made a decent amount of semi complex desserts from recipe authors I trust and they turned out great. Sure, there are some minor physical skills you learn and knowledge you gain, but for baking I find that as long as you follow good recipes precisely you can get great results. This does fall apart when you start talking about decorating desserts as that is definitely more art/skill than science.

[ajb]

In the 80s some bright spark realised that the smell of baking bread makes people hungry and buy more food, so now most large-enough UK supermarkets bake in-store.

[pushkine]

I believe nowadays they have automatic sprays for bakery smells, I saw a documentary about it like 10 years ago

[wkat4242]

Freshly baked bread is also a lot more delicious, especially when it's still warm.