A boulangerie has a legal duty to make and bake bread - you cannot use this name if you don’t. A “depot pain” should have bread made in a proper boulangerie elsewhere. And anything called “Le fournil de Julie” or similar is most likely buying in frozen industrial dough.
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Not really do the ones around here are still calling themselves boulangerie but still have frozen stuff and pre made dough it’s Not frozen it comes in made That’s how supermarkets do it
Go and have a look in the bins see what packages they have
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À boulangerie can buy in frozen pastry dough, or pastries. But the bread dough must be fresh and made according to the law, although it can be made off the premises I believe as long as it is cooked there. I would be surprised if a boulangerie was breaking the rules as somebody would have shopped them!
I don’t call it fresh but technically it is fresh comes in big buckets but it’s made in factories
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The supermarket where I was a manager in the UK made ( and still makes ) all bread from scratch. Croissants /donuts ect. were bought in frozen. And this wasn’t one of the 'up market ’ supermarkets either - but an Asda.
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Depends on your definition of “from scratch” - the Tesco that I normally use bakes fresh bread but it is clear that they get in a “bread mix” which is the dry ingredients pre packaged and they just add water to this before putting in in a mechanical kneader and baking.
It’s not exactly “country kitchen” is it? 
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Just because something is made in a “factory”does ‘t mean it’s bad. As long as it is made in the same way, with the same basic materials and not adding anything else to the mix then that’s fine…after all you don’t expect a baker to knead all the dough by hand do you? (Some do of course, and you pay for the privilege)
The law here is really quite clear about what a boulangerie is, and what traditional bread is
https://www.lesnouvellesdelaboulangerie.fr/a-propos-de-lappellation-boulangerie/
I don’t see any mention of what “traditional bread” is in that summary - only that to call yourself a boulangerie you have to select the ingredients and prepare, knead and bake the dough.
By that standard even bread prepared by the dreaded Chorleywood process (which is use for most supermarket loaves even “fresh, crusty” ones in the UK and some in France) would be allowed.
The only thing that is prohibited is using frozen dough.
Maybe the full legislation is clearer?
When I said from scratch - that’s what I meant. Since I was the Admin Manager in charge of signing off all in store orders - I know we ordered flour and yeast and made bread with ingredients not from a pre prepared mix.
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Which is excellent, I wish our local store did the same - but for a large organisation like Tesco consistency of product will be important and there is a natural tendency to want to control all the variables and costs.
Some 80% of supermarket bread in the UK - even “fresh baked” is made using the Chorleywood process which is to bread as pasteurised Brew XI was to real ale I’m afraid.
I have not seen any bakery do that for many years you have machines for that
And sadly, not just the UK, but has been widely adopted. Originally (supposedly) developed for small bakers to make their lives easier and to enable them the compete, in fact it’s been taken over by virtually every provider - and a simplified form of it is also in home bread-making machines. It involves the addition of enzymes to speed up the fermentation process, precisely so that they didn’t have to get up at 2am to start baking. Sadly, the law of unintended consequences…
If you want to read more, look up Andrew Whiteley Bread Matters who teaches sough dough baking in Cumbria and is incandescent about what we have done with our bread…
I don’t fully understand, but if, like me, you suffer from bloating after eating manufactured bread these days then it’s worth bearing in mind the Chorley Wood process. All too often it’s assumed to be gluten intolerance, but may well be due to the incomplete fermentation byproducts. True fermentation, using wild yeasts found naturally on the grains is a slow process. OH went on one of Andrew’s courses and good bread making using the old methods takes several days from creating the starter through to the final loaf (which is delicious).
Why I think Andrew is right? Because in the fifties as a child I never had problems eating any kind of bread, including white and the local baker got up at 2 in the morning to bake it - all before the Chorley Wood process was introduced.
Which as far as I’m aware only relates to the UK, not France.
Yes! Very specific.
Depends what kind of bread you are talking about. All the prepackaged stuff that seems to fly off French supermarket shelves … this is from a BBC article
For the past 50 years, a British food stuff has spread across the world to Australia, South Africa, South America, Turkey and even to supermarket shelves in France. But is the long life, plastic wrapped, sandwich loaf that was first created in Chorleywood a design classic or a crime against bread, asks David Sillito
All our Local boulangeries make the bread from scratch, obviously not the supermarkets, casino, Lidle etc. We did lose a boulangerie because the baker developed an allergy to flour but an even better one has taken it over.
Maybe it’s where we live, in the Lot.
But they are not boulangeries…
I know! But certainly round here boulangeries are closing in the face of competition from supermarkets and yes the supermarkets have their fresh bread but they also have whole aisles devoted to “Harry’s” “pain de mie” and all the other ghastly variants.
if u are situated anywhere close to Voiron a friend has a fully bio bakery - growing his own grains for the most part - he has a stall in the Voiron saturday market (in the bio part)… but it sounds like you’ve already got a decent bakers anyway!
salut…
undrell