There are a couple of little birds outside my window right now, feeding on grass grains that they will take back to feed their young, who are housed if I am not mistaken in nests under the eve of the house. I’ve read that nightingales are unremarkable looking brown song birds. Passerine, a somewhat biblical sounding word, is the name for the species or is it genus. I wonder if these birds were nightingales, given how often I’ve heard their song around the house. Nature identification hardly ever works that straightforwardly, most likely they were, just like I can be, tits of some sort or other. The wild grasses, the wild thyme, and other herbs, remind me that my food acquisition experiences, dominated as they are by all year round supermarket provision, rest on a pretty unchanged and pretty ancient empiricism of sampling, categorising and harvesting that which nature has provided through its own much longer shaping process of evolution. As I, at the local supermarket, U Marché, take myself to the bread section and empirically over time identify the ones I prefer, I am prompted to ask myself what kinds of bread are these, what are the differences between them, are they local, healthy, and so I cranked up the old internet search engine and here’s what I found. I don’t get the regular white baguette much. It’s the cheapest coming in under a euro and the biggest but it goes off the quickest and is the least edible when it does go off. It is delicious when super fresh and lathered with brie, and it’s good to know it’s out there, for those times when you are homeless and penniless, and your begging efforts outside the local supermarket only net you a euro or two. It just doesn’t feel very healthy or nutritional, it’s the white sliced pan of baguettes. Then there is the baguette rustique and baguette de compagne, a little more expensive, and apparently more or less the same thing. A baguette that uses no additives, takes longer to rise and lasts longer. I like this guy, if they are one and the same, or these guys, if they are indeed kissing cousins. I kinda feel I’ve seen both in the same bread shop, suggesting difference, but maybe I just saw the alternative names used in different places. This is my go to guy. I like them super crusty and pliable. The one I get at the U-marché, which I consider the Tesco of the local supermarkets, that is good for cleaning products and certain other stuff including bread, is broader and shorter than the standard baguette, making it more suitable for sandwich like applications, and shifting the proportion of crust to body in a direction I find agreeable. The baguette de compagne is made with some proportion of whole wheat flour, more yeast, and approaches a sourdough style. In the nip and tuck of price comparisons of household items between Ireland and France, where generally Ireland is cheaper, baguettes and bread generally are an area where France comes out clearly ahead. What will you get in Ireland for less than a Euro. Maybe a roll or two, nowhere approaching even a basic baguette in quality.