In my experience, the bread on AF always seemed fine (not exceptional, but fine). Then again, I haven't flown AF in over a year (my next flight is in J in July).

One note regarding bread, is the notion of heating bread, as Creber pointed out. Heated bread is not a French style of serving bread at a meal (outside of toast, of course). While it certainly is true that stale bread is better heated, I think in France serving heated bread with a meal would be a tacit admission that it is not fresh.

Of course, French bread in general is not what is was a generation ago (although there still is plenty of excellent bread made in bakeries). But France is now a modern society with gigantic retail stores (Carrefour, Hyper U, etc.), where industrial bread has made it harder and harder for the traditional boulangeries to compete.

The French government even had to create a new category of baguette, the baguette de tradition francaise, in order to validate the higher price of the tradiitonal French baguette, which contains no preservatives and no fat, but which only stays fresh for less than a day.

I think it's reasonable to assume that AF is not serving baguette de tradition francaise from the kitchens of Servair...