The French postal service has released a scratch-and-sniff stamp that will fill your letter room or office with the aroma of freshly baked bread as it honors the classic baguette.
The best thing since sliced bread, the baguette was recently honored by UNESCO with the status of ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage,’ or in other words, a standout element in the story of humanity that can’t be pinned down to the words on a page, the outcome of a battle, or the bricks making up a monument.
The stamp was unveiled last Thursday by La Poste on the occasion of Sant-Honore’s feast day—the patron saint of bakers.
“The baguette, the bread of our daily lives, the symbol of our gastronomy, the jewel of our culture”, La Poste says on its website.
It will cost €1.96 and run for a limited time with just under 600,000 copies set for printing. It depicts a baguette wrapped in blue and white ribbons.
The stamp’s ink is coated in microcapsules that burst when the customer scratches it, releasing the scent. La Poste purchases the special ink pre-made, and the smell is derived from a collection of bakeries.
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“And the difficulty for us is to apply this ink without breaking the capsules, so that the smell can then be released by the customer rubbing on the stamp,” Damien Lavaud, printer at Philaposte, was quoted as saying by France Bleu, according to France24.
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UNESCO attempts to summarize the value and uniqueness of baguettes over other breads with the following description.
Baguettes require specific knowledge and techniques: they are baked throughout the day in small batches and the outcomes vary according to the temperature and humidity.
They also generate modes of consumption and social practices that differentiate them from other types of bread, such as daily visits to bakeries to purchase the loaves and specific display racks to match their long shape.
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