France's battle of the baguette

It has been a losing battle for the boulangeries of France in recent years. Supermarkets with their pre-prepared frozen mixes bolstered with fast-rise additives have grabbed an increasing share of the bread market. The traditional baguette, baked from scratch on the premises from just flour, salt, water, and leavening, is now down to a less than 25% share of the market.
They tried back in 1998 to reverse the slide with legislation to prohibit the use of the word “boulangerie” on premises that didn't follow the old bread making principles or that used freezing at any point in the process. And traditional bakers have been running a promotional campaign to save the baguette from extinction by plastic wrapped sliced bread.

This week France launches the 19th edition of its annual Bread Festival across the country, a celebration of bakers who still hold dear the tradition of their craft. This year’s theme is centered around the crème de la crème of baguettes, called, suitably, the “tradition" as The Christian Science Monitor explains in a look at French cuisine on its website:

Top players in the bread industry continue to tout the benefits of traditional bread, says Jean-Pierre Crouzet, president of the National Confederation of Bakers and Pastry-Makers in France, who headed a 150-minute panel on this subject to launch the bread festival.
Bread’s decline has spurred a class of purists, like Fradette, and given rise to new experiments that could once again change French breadmaking – for the better.
Back in Provence, in the town of Apt, two giant bags of wheat indigenous to the region recently sat in the foyer of the Parc Naturel Regional, awaiting a local baker's demonstration for school children. It’s part of an initiative to revive a regional wheat that is long off the market but hardier and less in need of pesticide and fertilizer. The wheat’s lower yields, however, make it more expensive.
About 20 farmers are planting 150 hectares of the wheat, which is turned into bread sold in Provence at about a dozen bakeries. Public education is key to the project’s success, but so too are willing buyers. “We need to have consumers who are willing to eat it,” says the confederation's Nathalie Charles, acknowledging that the future remains unclear.