PARIS.  Jubilant fans poured into the streets here last night overturning Renaults and hitting riot policemen with baguettes after France reclaimed the World Baking Championship following a twelve-year dry spell.

"Nous sommes nombre une!"

"We had become like les Cubbies de Chicago," said Alain Robe-de-Bath.  "I thought I would not see ever this day in my life until I am dead," he said in the broken English he acquired at L'Ecole Normale du Jerry Lewis. 

"Nous sommes nombre une!" shouted Marielle Huysmans, a stewardess for L'Aviation au-Dessus de l'Atterrir et le Mer, a long-winded French company that apparently flies airplanes over both land and water.  "Down with American bleached-wheat white-bread imperialism," she added, referring to the American team, which placed first in 1999 and 2005.

" . . . . . . . . "

Even French mimes got into the act, gesturing at passing cars as if they were making the French team's "artistic" submission, an intricate dough sculpture depicting a woman on a bidet, the half-assed plumbing fixture in which the French sort of take baths.

Bidet

French pride was at stake following a string of ignominious defeats to baking expansion teams such as Taiwan, Japan and Tampa Bay.  Fans had pressed for a new coach, and Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy tapped Pierre Zimmerman, a "baker's coach" who is known for creating a relaxed kitchen atmosphere.  "These guys are professionals," Zimmerman said about his low-key approach.  "They don't need Knute Rockne speeches between the soup and fish courses."

Rockne:  "You call those profiteroles?  They look like Ring-Dings!"

Zimmerman said he would take a week off to recuperate, then begin preparations for the upcoming rookie draft.  "We're looking for an inside pastry chef who can make viennoiserie (yeasted pastry) and can sprinkle confectioner's sugar on croissants," he said.  "You want somebody who can hit the hole and fill it with raspberries and cream cheese."

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman