This dough is made with old bread
that would have gone to the trash.
France throws out more than 150,000 metric tons of bread every year.
That's nine loaves for every citizen.
This machine could help close the loop.
The Crumbler grinds stale baguettes into breadcrumbs that are so fine
they can replace flour.
But is this idea enough to reduce food waste
in bakeries across the country?
Bakery Pomponette is one of the more than 100 bakeries
in France that uses the Crumbler.
Bakers here slice unsold baguettes
and drop them into the Crumbler's silver chimney.
Today, Guillaume Devinat and his apprentice Elodie
are making a fresh batch of his signature baguette, the 20%.
Elodie measures flour, salt, yeast, and water.
Then she weighs the exact amount of crumbs
needed for the recipe.
She adds the breadcrumbs and then kneads the ingredients
to form a dough, which will rest overnight.
This machine helps shape it into baguettes.
Devinat rolls the dough once more
and adds the finishing touches before baking.
That is, until three years ago,
when his flour supplier told him about the Crumbler
and its inventor, Franck Wallet.
His solution? Crumbs, which can be
stored for months if dried properly.
But bakers told Wallet
there's no easy way to grind down their loaves.
So in 2015, Wallet quit his job as a city planner
and worked with a group of engineers
to create a Crumbler prototype.
Bread is one of the staples of any complete French meal.
French consumers expect it to be fresh
and without preservatives.
That leaves the country's 30,000
independent bakeries with a lot of unsold goods.
Many businesses donate that bread at the end of the day.
And since 2016, the French government has forbidden
supermarkets from throwing away their leftover food.
But even with those policies, there's simply too much bread.
Wallet estimates that about 10% of each bakery's production
goes to the trash.
Bread is one of the most wasted foods around the world.
Other companies have found fresh ideas
of what to do with it.
In the Netherlands, MetdeStad collects discarded loaves
from the streets around Rotterdam to turn into natural gas.
Biova, an Italian brewery, makes old bread into beer.
One advantage of the Crumbler is that
it can be used with any type of bread.
But getting the word out takes time.
For some bakers, the price of the Crumbler
is a deal-breaker.
The machine costs almost 500 euros for a one-month trial,
or more than 2,000 to buy outright.
But Devinat says it was worth the investment.
He's created a variety of recipes based on the crumbs.
So how do customers feel
about buying their daily bread from yesterday?
Instead of recycled, Wallet prefers to call
the items made with breadcrumbs escaped recipes.