The baguette is a unique French icon. It would be gauche, however, to compare this humble yet noble loaf to a film star, a king or a celebrated artist because its appeal lies in its perfection of ordinariness. In this way this stick of bread, which typically measures about 45cm in length, is also a design classic in a slender pantheon.

It is a robust and unchanging doughy redoubt in a world in which fads and fashion have eagerly sought to reinvent the culinary wheel and deconstruct the gastronomic classics so that we can all, à les Américains, have an order of everything on the side. But no: the baguette offers a reassuring shrug. It is what it is. The traditional baguette is made from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast. It’s the sort of culinary product that contains so few ingredients that its elements have nowhere to hide in its making and then in the final, joyous eating. The boulangers apply their scrutiny and formidable skills to these constituent parts, which come under some 230c of heat.

The baguette de tradition Française has made a considerable comeback in this era of people wondering whether factories – which we all agree are fine for building cars, say, or computers – might not be the best places to make food. So the additives, preservatives and general nonsense that prevail in some baguettes are derided rather than devoured by the artisan bakers of France and their millions of hungry devotees. Glance at the list of ingredients, say the bakers. If it seems too long, then it most certainly is.

The baguette is also emblematic of larger ideas that the French hold dear. It is something of a human right. It is the daily bread of the Lord’s Prayer, the staff of life. It is simple enough to be perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner too, adept at being the vehicle to deliver your beurre sel et confiture or a happily messy slice of chaource cheese. But it will probably still emerge as the star.

The baguette’s status as a national staple has unsurprisingly been enshrined by a country that knows what it is good at and what is good for it. In 1920, France put in place a price cap to ensure that everyone could eat it; this was only lifted in 1987 but the belief in people’s inalienable right to a baguette endures.

In recent years of energy price rises and Europe-wide inflation, the baguette has become something of an economic bellwether. News crews and researchers in France scrutinise it, while wags overseas find it mildly amusing that – of course – they’re up in arms about French sticks.

In Paris, as in the rest of the country, you can pick up a baguette for less than €1 at a supermarket. The chances are that it’ll be a slightly saccharine flute – edible but nothing special. Instead, you should visit a boulangerie and ask for un tradition. For the slightly higher cost of about €1.30, you will receive in your hand what Emmanuel Macron once described as “250g of magic and perfection” (what a relief it is that he didn’t choose to measure its qualities by length). That’s a small price to pay for the keys to an unimprovable culinary kingdom. The baguette, simple yet highly effective, is a great leveller.

Out and about in Paris, hungry and with an eye on the culture of the boulangerie – particularly the status of the baguette in a city well known for its deathless traditions and nimble transformations – Monocle walked and saw and ate and asked. Bakers told us how they bake it; customers described to us how they eat it and when. We learned about the daily ritual of the boulangerie visit to purchase le pain quotidien, that secular sacrament, that bastion, that baguette.