Baguettes

Baguettes
Most debates about baguettes between Francophiles quickly descend into acrimony. People love to reminisce about their holidays, and compare bakeries on 'rue du this' versus 'rue du that'. Before too long, someone will wade in and says the best baguettes, not to mention the best spoken French, can actually be found in Geneva. At that point, you know it's not too long before the guileless American in the room ventures that there are some decent baguettes to be had in Manhattan and San Francisco... and then, well, they're off to the races, with insults and fur flying here and there.

Baguettes are long, crusty sticks of bread made from flour, salt, water and yeast. The flour is almost always bleached white flour. The bread is also brushed with water and/or cooked in an oven with some steam to help make a crisp crust. Having no fat in it to make it moist, and no sweetener to help retain moisture, a baguette is only really good to eat the day you bought it.

The Francophile purists maintain that flour, salt, water and yeast is all that can be in a good baguette, by law. They're not quite right. Not to be picky, but the law in question doesn't actually concern "baguettes", it covers any bread that someone wants to sell as "traditional bread" (loosely translated), and it authorizes the following additional ingredients: "la farine de fève (2 %), la farine de soja (0,5 %) et la farine de malt de blé (0,3 %) (Décret "Balladur" N°93-1074 du 13 Septembre 1993, article 2). The "farine de fève" is fava bean flour, aka broad bean flour, and the "farine de soja" is soy-bean flour.

One of the things that the French don't understand about Anglo-Saxon countries is our willingness to absorb and adapt. We absorb foreign words into our language holis bolis, whereas the French have laws to ensure linguistic purity; and we absorb foreign food, adapt it and make it our own. The French don't understand making someone else's food part of your diet, and they don't like change. The biggest change happening now to the baguette market in France is that some are being advertised as being made with organic white flour. They must pass out when they see baguettes in America. Oh, you can get white flour baguettes, but you'll also see seven-grain, walnut, rye, wholewheat, and sourdough baguettes. And almost any baguette you buy commercially in America is going to have sugar, fat, dough conditioners, etc added to it.

I love the taste of a honest baguette, and wherever I am, I sniff out the places that sell "baguettes" that come the closest. I avoid like the plague baguettes that are basically regular bread shaped like a baguette. If I'm going to have regular bread, I want it shaped like regular bread so I can do certain things with it. You can usually filter out about half the baguettes right away just by looking at them, as the crust won't look thick and chewy. And I avoid the specialty baguettes when I have a craving for a baguette. I have no problem if a bakery in Manchester or Seattle wants to call something made with walnut and rye flour a baguette. The only actual resemblance to a baguette is the shape, and knowing what's inside I'll avoid it with a 10 foot pole, but hey, if some people want to call that a baguette, let alone eat it, let them get on with it. There are even recipes for making your own baguettes from scratch that you bake on your barbeque and instead of being appalled, I just think, "God bless America. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it."

After all, even the French do borrow from time to time from other cuisines, and make the adaptations that suit them. Almost every bakery in Paris now sells pizza slices that are nothing like what you get in Italy, and you don't see the Italians getting into a snit, mounting a day of protest and shutting down the train systems. Not as you'd notice, anyway. Can we learn from the che sarà Italians? You and I may know what our perfect baguette tastes like, and we want it to taste and look like that from now until 10,000 AD. Let it suffice, though, that while we are around, we are able to buy baguettes that come closest to our preferences, and let the others eat the seven-grain ones marbled with rye -- that way, we don't have to.

Even amongst people who all agree that a baguette should only be made from white flour, there's still a lot of snobbery -- er, preference -- involved. Many people will go to "artisanal" bakeries figuring that though they are paying 4 or 5 times more than what their loaf might cost elsewhere, it's worth it. Interestingly, in blind taste tests the BBC did in 2002, it was a supermarket (Waitrose's) that ended up having the best baguette, beating the "artisanal" loaves by a country mile. Many people also prefer to buy baguettes that weren't made from frozen dough delivered to the bakery. If you're one, you can tell from the bottom of the baguette: if there are little holes all over the place, it was probably cooked from frozen dough (mind you, by that point you've probably had your mitts all over it to get a good look, so shouldn't you be buying it anyway?)

Couronne / Ficelle / Flute
If a baguette is shaped into a ring before baking, it is called a "couronne". If it is made very thin, it is called a "ficelle". If it is made very thin and short, it is called a "flute".

Cooking Tips
If you are making your own baguette at home, you need steam somehow in the baking process to get the loaf crusty. Either dampen the surface of the loaves with a mist of water, or place a pan of hot water in the oven below the bread.

Don't despair when a baguette goes stale on you the next day; celebrate. On this site you will find gorgeous recipes for both savoury and sweet puddings that call for stale bread.

Storage
Use on day of purchase or freeze that day. During that day, store in a paper bag (not plastic if possible: plastic will make the crust go very soft.)

Literature & Lore
Baguette is a French word for a "rod"; it is also used for pool sticks and magic wands.

In France, baguettes are carried home under the arm. There is a piece of paper wrapped around the baguette where your armpit holds it tight -- just in case you ever wondered.

Also called: French Stick Baguettes, Couronne, Ficelle, Flute (French)