Our village has a boulangerie just 250metres from us. Our younger guests, and older ones with good teeth, love to go there for their holiday bread. However the current boulanger is new and is closely following the pattern of the previous one, who went bust! They both pride themselves on their artisan / traditional bread, hard enough to knock nails in, but the population in our commune has an average age of over 60, and suffers from french (lack of ) dentistry excellence. So two other bakers from nearby villages deliver into our village with bread that the elderly population can actually get their teeth - or at least, their gums - into. There is another new excellent boulangerie in another village only 3km away in a different direction that does a much bigger trade, being on a main road, and offering a wider selection of traditional and softer bread that their customers want. Our previous boulanger refused to sell scores of baguettes to the village comite des fetes for the brocante, as he said he’d be competing with himself for sandwiches, so they bought them from Leclerc! No wonder local artisan boulangers are going down the pan. They should stop whinging and provide what their customers want.
@Rhys_Williams …Oh my, there’s none so queer as folk… or so it would seem… in whatever country… 
Bread is such an important part of daily life…
We had a visiting baker’s van for the last 2 years… twice a week… and oh what joy that was. His daughter baked the bread and he did the cakes and wonderful other bits and bobs. Everything was Bio. He was keen to try out new ideas and, since he parked opposite my house, I profited from the odd… “Try this one and tell me what you think, Stella”…my favourite was the baguette aux cereales and the margueritte. He tried different flours from time to time, which was interesting too… he always seemed to have 6 or 7 different types of bread to choose from, so if we had visitors, they got to pick whatever they fancied… The whole village mourns the fact that he no longer visits… 
he stopped due to ill health and now, we are just a Depot de Pain on Sundays for the baker in the next village. It’s good, but not as good in my view.
I go a variety of ways to work and back every day and get my bread at the boulangeries on the way. Some are better than others but it is always nice to try different things. In any case les goûts et les couleurs…
If any of you happen to be in Le Fleix, near Sainte Foy la Grande, do go to the (not very attractive looking) boulangerie on the Bergerac road (it may well be the only one), they have a fantastic brown loaf called ‘le rusto’. Sells out fast, so go of a morning… no idea what their normal baguette is like. A baguette de tradition française made with label rouge flour is usually a safe bet, wherever.
Try the new boulangerie in Gardonne Vero. Excellent bread and super cakes. It’s in what used to be a Renault service point. On the right about 50 metres before the traffic lights going toward Bergerac from Ste Foy.
Is it La Mie de Gardonne?
That would be a useful location on way from Bergerac Airport for us.
Thank you for the recommendation, David! Next time I take the D937 I’ll check it out 
Has anyone got a recipe for baguettes that don’t turn out like ciabatta? Mine always do and I’m not sure where I am going wrong
Yes Mat it is.
Professional french bakers prove their baguettes in folds of heavy linen. Thus the dough is not allowed to spread out into ciabatta shapes. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XAhYMSoYU
Thank you, that explains a lot
Discovered what I thought was a Tardis but which turned out to be a baguette machine. Tried it out for 1 euro and found something that will satisfy my occasional desire for a baguette early on a Sunday morning!
I put in my 1 euro and within less than 15 seconds it delivered what you see in the photos – a warm, fresh, crisp & tasty baguette. How does it do that?
There’s a gnome inside, baking away like billyo, who has some sort of time tweaking gizmo to make you think it takes 15 seconds.
We would always have supported the nearest - and only near - 1 boulanger 7km away. But we’ve had 2 generations running it so far as we could tell and both truly hopeless.
I now bake my own using a Lidl machine mostly - I used to make by hand and prefer it but kitchen is small and flour goes everywhere… One day…a Panasonic like @Jane_Williamson. No croissants sold anywhere near so I am making my own as well as the odd plate of buns. They are getting better each time I make them, unfortunately 
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I have the bakery downhill near the market in Decazeville marked down for croissants as and when I make it over to Decazeville for the Friday market (60km away). As recommended by @an_droo IIRC. Meanwhile the occasional curved croissant sold in some Lidl’s for part of the year will do- not their standard straight ones which have a strange fat in them.
In Brive 250m downhill from the station there’s a baker that makes some of their croissants tradition with a lard component- not just butter-like 40 and more years ago. I adore these.
I thought maybe the baguettes are newly cooked elsewhere, and kept warm in the Tardis, waiting for customers. And 15 seconds to give them that final extra burst of warmth…but I’d love to believe there’s a gnome inside…!
I’d love to buy boulangerie bread everyday but we get through so much bread with my boys, 2 a day at 1,10 each is over 60€ a month so I’m afraid its Lidls sliced white with baguettes occasionally! Lidls rustic is OK but our local traditional is lovely!
I want there to be a gnome too 
I have my own gnome in the kitchen….who turns out two crusty sourdough loaves a week, plus sourdough pizza base and breadsticks with the excess starter.
Supermarket bread has far too much sugar and salt for our taste, whereas local boulanger uses less, and also makes turkish flatbreads and semoule galettes. So that’ where we go for anything else.
Delicious. I had some fantastic bread from I think it was Azerbaijan in Gdansk, or it might have been Georgian.
I think even here packet bread doesn’t have to obey the same rules as boulangeries where they are very strict, which is why packet bread is so nasty (to my taste).
I love Turkish flatbread. I remember a wonderful Turkish shop in Sydney near a friends. I’d stop and buy a flat bread and some babaganoush and hommous and a bottle of wine on Friday nights, delicious 
Having been obliged to return to the UK we have had to do without one of the great glories of France - the boulangerie. An independent bakery is almost a thing of the past here. We are saved by two things - rather surprisingly, Lidl’s sourdough boule, which, although it is undoubtedly “industriel” is actually not bad at all. And the other, is Crosta and Mollica’s pane pugliese, which make wonderful toast. Impossible to get decent croissants.
Very few boulangeries actually process their flour and make bread, it would be very time consuming and expensive. Most buy ready mixed with a fair amount of admixture containing anti toxic innés and digestive agents amoung other things.