ALTAMURA, Italy, Jan. 10 - First, an inconvenient truth: This is not a new story. But somehow the tale of how the city with the best bread in Italy forced its McDonald's out of business never really got told, and is spilling out now.

All the elements of a McDonald's morality play remain relevant today: perceived corporate arrogance; traditional food triumphing over food product; a David in the form of a humble and graying baker against an expansionist American Goliath.

And, inevitably, it includes the French.

It was the leftist and Amero-skeptic French newspaper Libération that last week wrote the fullest account of what happened in Altamura, in southern Italy, where the road signs rightly welcome visitors to "The City of Bread."

"The long red mat was taken away secretly during the night," it reported, noting too that the "enormous M" over Piazza Zanardelli was "also packed up surreptitiously." The windows were covered "like a shroud on the victim of a culinary battlefield."