This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

If the idea of buying a baguette from a vending machine appalled the traditional bread-loving French, there is perhaps more shocking news to come.

In a perfect coals-to-Newcastle move, a South Korean chain has opened a bakery called Paris Baguette in the heart of the French capital.

The food chain now says its global aim is to become to bread what McDonald's is to hamburgers, with plans to expand into 60 countries in the next six years.

The new 200-square meter boulangerie opened last month within walking distance from the Louvre, Paris City Hall, the Pont Neuf bridge and Notre Dame cathedral.

To assuage French amour propre – and throw a metaphorical crust to the critics – it has joined the Chambre Professionnelle des Artisans Boulangers-Patissiers, which requires all members to adhere to traditional baking standards.

The Paris Baguette bakery chain was founded in 1988 by the Korean businessman Hur Young-in, head of the food and confectionary group SPC. It has 3,250 boulangerie à la française outlets in South Korea and bakeries in America, Singapore, Vietnam and China where it aims to open 500 shops.

At worldwide outlets outside France it calls itself a "traditional French bakery" – its logo features the Eiffel Tower – and employees wear stripy Breton T-shirts and berets. However, much of the bread is made in South Korea, frozen and dispatched around the globe.

At its first Paris outlet in the central 1st arrondissement near the Seine, the huge Paris Baguette boulangerie, with its chocolate brown awnings, employs local chefs and claims to use "only traditional French bakery ingredients and methods".

"We regard France as the spiritual home of our bakery products," Hur Young-in told the Korea Herald to mark the launch of the Paris boulangerie.

"The opening of our Paris store highlights our commitment to continually improving and perfecting the quality of our European-style bread and pastries."

Few things are more sacred and symbolic to the French than bread in general, and the baguette in particular. Like wine, cheese, garlic, snails and berets, it has become one of the emblems of the nation, its people, traditions and the "terroir", the notion of the land and the food it provides.

These long thin loaves – the word baguette also means wand – are made from a small and specific list of ingredients laid down by decree 93-1074 of 13 September 1993.

The French consume around 10 billion baguettes every year. The traditional baguette can only be made with wheat flour, water, yeast or raising agent and salt. It must not contain any egg, milk products, oil or any preservatives. There are sub-clauses allowing limited deviations from the rules, mostly relating to the type of flour used.

It is around 5cm-6cm wide, 3cm-4cm high and around 65cm long. The average weight is 250g. Legend has it that they were made stick-like by Napoléon Bonaparte's bakers so they could be transported by the empire's soldiers in a pocket in their uniform trousers, though modern historians have cast doubt on what they dismiss as an urban myth.

In addition to the regulations concerning what is in baguettes, only those who make the dough and bake the bread in situ are allowed to call themselves a "boulangers".

Dominique Anract, president of the Chambre Professionnelle des Artisans Boulangers-Patissiers, said: "Anyone can make a traditional baguette, and companies are opening bakeries here, there and everywhere in the world. The question that concerns us is not whether it can be done, but whether what is produced is a good baguette.

"It takes two years to train to become a boulanger, but even then it doesn't mean you're any good. That takes at least 10 years."

Anract added: "I'm not worried about people making traditional baguettes as long as it's not done any-old-how, as long as they are of a correct standard and good quality. That's my worry. We have to protect our product."

In August 2011, an entrepreneurial Parisian baker introduced the first baguette vending machine, filling it with partially cooked sticks that were given a final baking when ordered.

As if really pushing its luck with the French, the Korean company also owns the trademark Paris Croissant.