Jouet - Bagging the Baguette
It used to be an axiomatic fact that each small village had its own ‘boulangerie’ <bakery> in which a jolly baker got up at 4am to make sure that fresh baguettes were ready for your breakfast plate on a Sunday morning.
Here in Jouet, it is not a boulangerie down the road but a FACTORY called ‘Maisadour’.
Here M. Boulangerie is in charge of two flour dusted acolytes who turn out immense lots of bread for the entire Cazaubon area of which Jouet is a small part.
He rather proudly allowed me to take photos and I was given the signal honour of selecting the perfect baguette for our table. I tapped the baguettes like a pro much to M. Boulangerie’s amusement.

 

 
The back room of the Bakery showing the Baguette machine  - each baguette a perfect size and baked to perfection.

After Breakfast  - A side trip to La Bastide D’Armagnac

Bastides are fortified towns built in medieval France starting around 1229, the date of the first recorded bastide. All bastides have a grid layout and a central market square with a covered weighing and measuring area. Bastides began to appear as feudalism began to wane in medieval France, and were an attempt by landowners to generate revenues from taxes on trade rather than tithes (taxes on production)