I've dedicated a healthy portion of my life walking the streets and boulevards of Paris to find grainy bread here. I know I shouldn't complain. There's a boulangerie on every corner. You can get excellent baguettes or a nice loaf of pain au levain just about anywhere. But it's hard to find a loaf of bread with lots of seeds and stuff in it.
Maybe it's because the breads here, like Parisians, are so refined. I don't know.

Stübli makes dense, authentic German breads, but on my last visits the breads I lugged home were mushy and uninteresting, and no longer worth the schlep across Paris...even though it's a good excuse to make the voyage to Alléosse, the mind-blowing cheese shop on the rue Poncelet. There's a dinky, uninspired-looking joint on the rue Faubourg-Poissonière that makes sensational baguettes totally covered with golden sesame seeds that is wonderful toasted for breakfast. I crave this bread and make the voyage there often. But it's out of the way, and somewhat depressing, so no one goes there and I'm afraid they'll be closing soon.

Here are some of my favorite breads from various bakeries across Paris. Although I do love a traditional, crackly baguette paired with cheese, or toasted slices of hearty boule rustique slathered with homemade confiture for breakfast, these are the sturdy, hearty breads that I enjoy most here in Paris.

Norlander Bread
Christian Voiron
61, rue de la Glaçiere

I learned about this bread from Clotilde's explorations and it's a favorite. Tight and compact, Norlander bread is the heaviest bread I've found in Paris. And it's also small, making it the perfect bread for a little afternoon snack with some contraband peanut butter, which a friend smuggled out of an American army base in Switzerland.

Pain Nordique
Le Grande Epicerie
22, rue de Sèvres

I've been told the Grand Epicerie makes over 80 different kinds of bread underground, beneath this enormous food emporium. This is a lighter, airy bread, yet full of lots of sunflower seeds and a good amount of oat flakes. It's excellent sliced-thin and toasted. But get there early: for some reason, by mid-afternoon they start feeding all the Pain Nordique loaves into the slicing machine and bagging them up.
Last time I was there, I was in the slowest line in the world, and as the lone saleswoman waited patiently on some madame that was bickering over the prices or freshness of a single roll or something. Meanwhile the other salesperson was tossing the brown loaves into a slicing machine as fast as he could. All I could do was stand there helplessly, hoping that my turn would come soon, before he could finish slicing all the loaves.
I ended up getting the last two. Whew!

Pain aux Cereales
Eric Kayser
8, rue Monge

This is perhaps the best bread in the world.
I don't know how Eric Kayser does it, but each loaf comes out encrusted with golden sesame seeds. Slice it open, and you'll find a delicate but full-flavored bread studded with crunchy grains of millet, sesame and sunflower seeds, with a naturally sweet taste. I used to walk across Paris to his shop on the rue Monge for a loaf (actually, I always get two and freeze the other.) Now Kayser has opened bakeries across Paris and my local market at the Bastille has a vendor who sells the same bread, inexplicably, without identifying the baker or bakery of origin. Once I noticed an errant Kayser bag off to one side, which gave away their ruse.

Tradigrains
Au Pain de Saint-Gilles
1 bis, rue Saint-Gilles

When the quality of the baguettes of my local boulanger, Au Levain du Marais, slid downhill after their month-long summer vacation a few years ago, I agonized over the loss for weeks and weeks. I was torn. In France, your live your life according to your local bakery. You know when the loaves go in and come out of the oven, when the baker is off, and how to get the baguette cooked just the way you like it (bien cuite, svp!) You adjust your life, since most bakeries are closed two days of the week, so you need to plan your schedule and meals around those two days. My supreme disappointment lasted for months until I discovered this grainy Tradigrain loaf at Au Pain de Saint-Gilles in the Marais, just a few blocks from chez David. Now this is proudly my baguette of choice. Do you see why?
Millet, poppy seeds and flax seeds ripple through the interior of each loaf. I can barely get out the door of the bakery without ripping off the end and devouring it (a French tradition, after any baguette purchase...I think of it as an immediate quality-control check.)