France has issued postage stamps that have a scent like that of a baguette (Photo: laposte.fr)
Do you love the smell of freshly baked bread? Does the scent of a loaf uplift your mood? If yes, you'll be interested in learning about a unique type of stamp recently released by the French Post Office (La Poste). As per the Parisian stationery shop, Le Carré d'encre, this scratch-and-sniff postage stamp has a "bakery scent", the BBC reported. It contains an illustration of the quintessential French bread, the baguette. The loaf is depicted as being tied around the middle with ribbons in the colours of the French national flag: blue, white and red. Nearly 600,000 of these stamps have been released for sale in the country. As per the BBC, they were launched on May 16, the day of Saint-Honore, who is the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. Each stamp is priced at €1.96 (approx Rs 177).
The ink used on these special stamps contains microcapsules which exude the distinctive bread scent, according to The Guardian. As per reports, Damien Lavaud, a printer at Philaposte, told French media, "This scent is encapsulated. We buy it from another manufacturer...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."
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The baguette is an important symbol as it is "profoundly rooted" in the daily life of the French, La Poste wrote on its website. It added that the bread "embodies a ritual, that of going to your bakery, a local business anchored in the region, attracting twelve million consumers every day".
In 2022, the "artisanal know-how and culture of baguette bread" was inscribed in UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Want to know more fascinating facts about baguettes? Check out our article here.
Also Read: Baguette, Kimchi And More: 9 Popular Foods On UNESCO's Cultural Heritage List