A typical French breakfast consists of a croissant or bread with butter and jam and sometimes a sweet pastry. Fresh fruit juice and hot beverages, like coffee or tea, are also included. Here all meals for French breakfast. The tradition of eating a large meal mid-day continues at dinner time in France.
A French breakfast is sweet. It is composed of slices of buttered bread and jam spread on it, sometimes croissants or other pastries and cereals. Usually, the drinks are coffee, orange juice or milk.
One of the most popular French breakfasts is Pain Perdu. This is your French toast made with bread that is dipped in eggs and milk, then fried. Pain Perdu actually translates to “lost bread” which refers to stale bread.
A typical breakfast in Paris is a croissant (buttery roll of flaky pastry) and/or a tartine (French bread sliced lengthwise, with butter and jam), café au lait (coffee with milk, also called café crème), and perhaps some fruit or juice.
While a tartine can be made on any kind of bread, for a true French breakfast, a baguette is the preferred choice. Sliced horizontally, toasted, and then slathered with butter and/or jam (confiture), it's the most standard thing you'll see on the breakfast table in France.
The French are amoureux des produits laitiers (in love with dairy products) in general. After all, France is one of the largest milk producers in Europe. It's not uncommon to eat yogurt every day, especially with breakfast.
For breakfast foods in France, think bread and jam or a pastry and not a fried egg, cheese, or meat. In France, it's generally not scrambled eggs or an omelet like we might eat in the U.S. Eggs are more commonly seen as a non-breakfast meal option for the French.
French people will sometimes have eggs for breakfast. Eggs are usually cooked hard-boiled with salt and pepper. Soft-boiled eggs are also very popular, and you can even find them on restaurant menus for breakfast (and lunch).
An usual French lunch will include: an appetizer (une entrée), such as a mixed salad, soup, terrine or pâté; main course, (le plat principal), choice of beef, pork, chicken, or fish, with potatoes, rice, pasta and/or vegetables; cheese course (from a local selection) and/or a sweet.
Breakfast in Italy: what to expect
Traditional breakfast drinks in Italian households are coffee, tea and cocoa milk for the kids and the main breakfast foods are bread with butter and jam, biscuits and cereals.
While the main dish of a traditional French dinner is usually meat or fish, it can be vegetarian in some homes. French people are not as attached to their meats as Americans are — you can find them eating pasta or rice just as often as steak.
1. Bread. When you imagine French food, the many different types of bread may come to mind. From baguettes to the various pain graines-céréales options which have a wide variety of grains mixed with different types of seeds.
The French typically eat pastries for breakfast, potatoes for lunch, and soups for dinner. France, like most developed countries, also has its share of meat eaters, vegetarians, and salty-and-sweet food enthusiasts.
Q: “Why do the French have only one egg for breakfast?" A: “Because one egg is an OEUF” (which sort of sounds like “enough”).
Bread in France: It's a Staple
French people take bread very seriously. In some countries bakers add nutritional supplements to their bread, or they add gluten to make the bread rise better. That's not allowed in France. French bakers (called boulangers) cannot take shortcuts to make the process of making bread faster.
The French have always stuck to three meals a day and generally don't do food outside these set meals. Children usually have a small snack or goûter after school - a piece of fruit or a cake - but this is limited to a specific time, and adults generally don't snack.
The French have had a long love affair with chickens and, as Julia Child and her co-authors of Mastering the Art of French Cooking noted, some of the most glorious dishes in French cuisine were created for this farmyard bird.
In Southern France, a simple method is used to make creamy scrambled eggs served over toasted baguette slices. They use cream and chilled butter, of course, cooked over low heat. What is this? Oeufs is French for eggs.
In France, breakfast is the least important meal of the day
It's the meal that will get you through a busy morning until lunchtime.
Pretty much the same cereals as in the US, with less choice, and usually a bit less sugar… Cheerios, Rice Crispies, Chocapic… No peanut butter and jelly in France. It's now possible to find peanut butter (du beurre de cacahuètes) in all the major supermarkets, but it's more to cook Asian food than to use as PB&J.
Dishes like ratatouille (a stewed vegetable dish) and épinards au gratin (a cheesy, spinach, lasagna-type dish) are staples in French culture and are great examples of how the French love to incorporate vegetables in their diet. In schools, students are given lots of fresh vegetables in their cafeteria lunches.
The French diet consists of real food
French women shop daily at local markets for fresh vegetables, fish, meats, fruits, and dairy products. These whole foods are usually grown by local farmers in soil that are naturally rich (what we would call organic food).