The Perfect French Baguette
bbc.com
The Perfect French Baguette
1–10 of 80 posts
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#2[deleted]
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#3Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time.
You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread.
But it tastes oh so good.
French bakerys - have a very limited supply of baguetts - because they have limited space to let the dough ripen for a hour or more (if it ripens cold).
https://bakerbettie.com/french-baguette-recipe/
Not interesting on a industrial scale.. which is why you usually get only the tasteless whitebread you usually get.
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#4Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time. You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread. But it tastes oh so good. Fren…
We manage to factory produce prosciutto, which takes 18 months, cheeses that require years to mature, alcohol that takes decades, etc. 24 hours is no obstacle to a factory.
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#5Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time. You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread. But it tastes oh so good. Fren…
We manage to factory produce prosciutto, which takes 18 months, cheeses that require years to mature, alcohol that takes decades, etc. 24 hours is no obstacle to a factory.
You eat two halfs of prosciutto or a wheel of parmigano every day?
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#6It’s interesting that the modern baguette is such a symbol, as it’s a product of the Industrial Age (steam driven ovens) and its introduction alsmost drove artisanal breads from the market over a period of 50 years (until, it seems, Poilâne revived it. Of course people continued to produce non-baguettes all along, they just weren’t iconic or common).
So now there’s a lovely assortment of brads available again...and with all that choice I still continue to enjoy a humble baguette as well.
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#7Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time. You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread. But it tastes oh so good. Fren…
We manage to factory produce prosciutto, which takes 18 months, cheeses that require years to mature, alcohol that takes decades, etc. 24 hours is no obstacle to a factory.
I agree with you, but I'm curious as to why french bread in stores is universally less good than french bread from dedicated bakers (places like ACME, a Berkeley based bread producer, that sell to larger stores such as Safeway I would classify as dedicated bakers).
Maybe something about the volume of dough required to make bread on a truly industrial scale means it's not feasible to knead the dough properly? I was reading that you actually knead a baguette relatively little, but I can see that with a large volume of dough, it would be hard to achieve a uniform dough with very little kneading.
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#8Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time. You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread. But it tastes oh so good. Fren…
They sell mass produced 'french baguettes' at the grocery store i go to regularly. They're not as good as the in store baked ones but they're passable. Definitely noticably different to the standard mass produced white bread.
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#9Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time. You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread. But it tastes oh so good. Fren…
All the French bakeries I went to actually had a huge amount of fresh baguettes, absolutely delicious and 35 cents each. Maybe they were bad compared to gourmet baguettes, of course, but they were great compared to the American variants
Re: The Perfect French Baguette
#10Is not really factory produce-able like original ciabatta- cause one part of the recipe that makes the taste, cant be effectively integrated. Its time. You need little yeast, you put the poolish in a olive-oil covered cup, and put it somewhere cool. And there it stays - for nearly a day. Then you add flour- and let it slowly come all the way. Then for all your work you get little bread. But it tastes oh so good. Fren…
We manage to factory produce prosciutto, which takes 18 months, cheeses that require years to mature, alcohol that takes decades, etc. 24 hours is no obstacle to a factory.
Mass producing baguette is done in many supermarket in France, but I've never tasted any good one coming out of it
Producing a good baguette is an art, meaning that a good boulanger knows how to take into account many external factors like humidity in the air to adapt the recipe (% of water, prep time, cooking time). produce consistent result and a baguette that taste good and fresh for a full day.
As for the number of baguettes produced in one batch, it is also because baguettes (different from other bread that last serveral days) are really better fresh. Fresh from the oven (for breakfast !) is best, half a day is good, 1.5 day and still good means you have a very good boulanger.