Chef Djibril Bodian is a second-generation baker of Senegalese origin. Last year he won first prize in the Grand Prix de la Baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris,  a.k.a. The Best Baguette in Paris Competition.

Chef Djibril also won the top prize five years ago. This prestigious award allowed him to be the only baguette supplier to French President Holland at the Elysées Palace. The fame and publicity didn’t hurt his pockets either. He can be found creating baked goodness at ‘Grenier à Pain’ in Montmartre.

For Djibril Bodian, whose baguette graced the table of French President Francois Hollande after it was judged the best in Paris, the perfect sample has a thin, crispy crust and a light crumb that doesn’t stick.

“And a smell that makes you want to take a bite,” the 38-year-old baker of Senegalese origin, who won last year’s contest, said in an interview.

Winning the capital’s annual bake off is a badge of honor for baguette makers in Paris, which counts about 1,060 artisan boulangeries. Their long breads remain an icon of French food culture even as the country has over the years become one of McDonald’s Corp.’s biggest markets. The winning baker supplies the Elysee presidential palace for a year and draws a stream of Parisians and tourists curious to sample his bread.

French bakers sell about 10 to 12 billion of the long breads per year, according to the country’s national flour millers’ association. In Paris, 85 percent of bread sales are baguettes, said Dominique Anract, who heads the local professional chamber for bakers and pastry chefs.

The recipe for “baguette de tradition francaise” was determined by a government decree in 1993, with ingredients set at wheat flour, water, yeast and common salt. The rest is in the hand of the baker.

So what’s the secret to the perfect baguette?
“The secret is: take your time,” said Bodian, who begins work every day at 2 a.m. at the Le Grenier a Pain Abbesses bakery in Paris’s Montmartre district, best known for its Sacre Coeur church and nightclubs including the Moulin Rouge. “You need the right ingredients, and a good oven.”