I love dinner party chats like this so long I don’t have to clear the table and do the washing up.
I don’t think we will have any choice.
I think that the Green candidate might be Martin Whiteside who lives just up the road from our old house and for whom we have voted in local elections. He appeared in the film clip on Look West this evening.
The fork goes into the bread!
The fork goes into the bread! @Jane_Williamson
The use of bread to clean one’s plate or dish.
Take a baguette (or a roll) with both hands. One hand should be positioned close to the end of the baguette, the other positioned so as to leave a gap of about 1cm from the other.
This gap will provide the tearing point at which a portion of baguette will the separated from the rest. The detached portion should be about 4cm in length.
With care, and a slight rotation of both wrists in opposing directions to the length, this portion, secured between the two hands, will be sheared off. Alternatively, and rarely, a knife may be used to achieve this purpose
It is advisable to perform this action with care, lest a fragment of bread should be accidentally sent as a projectile into another guest’s couvert.
This detached portion is that with which you will eventually mop up your sauce.
Next, holding the detached portion lengthwise vertically before you at eye level, use your fingers to divide the portion lengthwise into two equal pieces; each portion will have a crusty side, and a doughy side.
The width of these will vary with the size of the hands which performed the tearing-off action mentioned above.
A portion between 3cm and 5cm will be satisfactory, but the size of the eventual portion will be at your own discretion, and vary (perhaps) the width of the baguette.
These portions will function like little ‘mop- heads’: the doughy part, offering the most readily absorbent surface to the sauce, will be the inferior part.
The upper (superior) surface of the fragment is better suited to accept the tines of the fork, the full length of which will serve as the implement’s ‘mop handle’.
Lay the portions ‘doughy-side’-down on the table beside your plate or, if preferred on the plate itself.
Identify an appropriate place on the upper (crusty) surface of the ‘mop head’, and firmly but not hastily, pierce the crust with the tines of the fork.
The most suitable place for the fork handle is that in which the tines of the fork are inserted securely midway between the two lateral (long) edges of the ‘mop’, and parallel to those edges.
It should also be placed so that the ‘head’ of the fork is equidistant from the other (shorter) edges of the portion.
This ensures ease of use in mopping the sauce: and it is ‘ergonomically’ correct.
The implement is now ready for use, and will absorb sauce to its optimum capacity if moved carefully around the plate. Try to avoid excessive pressure on the head of the sauce-mop, as this will limit the absorption of sauce, and may cause the head to disintegrate.
Mop the sauce from the plate until its surface is in a seemly state to accommodate service of the subsequent course, if proposed.
If there is an excess of sauce, further mop heads may be needed, using the same technique. Excess of sauce at the end of the meal suggests that too much may have been poured at the start of the dish.
It is normal practice to consume the sauce-impregnated bread to complete the course, and a cleaned plate will be a sign to the host that another course may be served, after an appropriate interval, and wine, and water etc.
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You learn something every day! I have never seem anyone mop their plate with bread on a fork - even in michelin starred restaurants. I must get out more.
There’s thread drift and then there’s the ridiculous
Bye
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I have eaten in countless French households and numerous French restaurants and I have never seen anybody use a fork to clean their pkate or eat bread. When near the coast I often enjoy seafood meals and have often commented that, even in respectable establishments, that if it wasn’t for the dessert I’d have eaten just about all of my meal with my fingers.
@JaneJones sighs, “I must get out more…”
Getting out more is soooo yesterday’s style, Jane! 
It takes time to cotton on to the thread, Mary. Don’t let it needle you, you’ll soon get it sewn up and buttoned down.
Byeeee 
PS I’m zipping up for the night myself 
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As per the rise of the Nazi party, it’s a slippery slope we are on right now! I’m hoping the country will vote for a non two party solution or even a liberal solution as I think we need a third way in politics right now to change the course of history for the better not the worse.
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Perhaps this is an age thing. What was de rigeur in polite society years ago has now changed.
I noticed this at a lunch the other day. People from different backgrounds behaving differently.
I met a British person under 30 at a friend’s house a couple of months ago and held out my hand and said how do you do and he not only didn’t understand shaking hands but said something along the lines of ‘nobody speaks like that, never heard anyone say how do you do before’.
Extraordinary (and comes over as so rude, though not deliberately, of course, and he didn’t realise).
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Are you imposing traditional British class values onto French residents? If so are these residents French or British? I’ve never seen any bread related age or ‘class’ divisions in French households, the bread always sits on the table and is used and eaten by hand. I have, however, seen a difference between smart people and ‘country folk’ when it comes to using pocket knives at the table.
Peter i am afraid we have to reject you Instructions For Use as listed, you make no reference to the Risk Analysis performed nor di you make reference to valid regulations or guidlines in your IFU. This is based on EU regulations number XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-2019 which supercedes regulation XXXXXXXXXXXXX-2017 as amended by XXXXXXXXXXX- 2015.
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When I was growing up (in France, obv) there was no saucing at all at the table. You could get away with it if you were a child hanging around in the kitchen eg swiping a bit of bread around the salad bowl to soak up some vinaigrette. But not if you were sitting at a dining table even outside.
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Perhaps you are not mixing in the ‘right’ circles?
We have been told that it is ‘croquant’ manners.
We have french friends who do both.
Gosh, so I am right!
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Yes, and I think the conscientious actual cleaning the plate with your bread must be a throwback to when people didn’t change plates etc between courses and a fairly old-fashioned typically paysan attitude to waste and also the effort of plate-washing to save on hot water etc.
So saucing with a fork is intermediate and informal.
Now I come to think about it I was encouraged to sauce my plate by my grandparents’ cook if having supper by by myself in the kitchen (and it was always delicious) but it wasn’t allowed otherwise.
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But…but…he promised, do or die, we would leave all that EU mumbo-jumbo behind us on 31 October…! 
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I must add that information to the Parisian lawyers and even judges who I have often eaten with when I post their Christmas cards. I’m sure that they will be amused than an English lady considers them not to be in the ‘right circles’. I can hear them laughing from here.
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