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The Perfect French Baguette

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Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#11

Post by marmaduke »

_eLRIC wrote: post #10
ceejayoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Baker is the English word.

I don't think the taste of mass produced baguettes is so bad as the lack of texture. And they are usually over cooked

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#12

Post by ceejayoz »

_eLRIC wrote: post #10
ceejayoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Supermarkets are going to target "cheap and good enough", in general. An industrial-scale factory can control for a lot of those external factors - it's a lot more likely to have humidity and temperature control, automation that ensures precise timings and measurements, etc.

I do agree that freshness is key with breads like this - there's nothing like a freshly baked one, and I still miss the morning croissant and baguette from when I stayed in Paris years ago.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#13

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
_eLRIC wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Supermarkets are going to target "cheap and good enough ", in general. An industrial-scale factory can control for a lot of those external factors - it's a lot more likely to have humidity and temperature control, automation that ensures precise timings and measurements, etc. I do agree that freshness is key with breads like this - there's nothing like a freshly baked one, and I still miss the morning croissant and b…

[deleted]

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#14

Post by cryptocheetah »

“When I was on the jury,” Bouattour said, “it was easy to pick the 10 or 20 baguettes that stood out. But after that, when you’re comparing number three and number eight, the differences are so small.”

IMHO, any of the top 20 make for an excellent butter delivery vehicle.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#16

Post by _eLRIC »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
_eLRIC wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Supermarkets are going to target "cheap and good enough ", in general. An industrial-scale factory can control for a lot of those external factors - it's a lot more likely to have humidity and temperature control, automation that ensures precise timings and measurements, etc. I do agree that freshness is key with breads like this - there's nothing like a freshly baked one, and I still miss the morning croissant and b…

You want to adapt the recipe for the weather outside of the bakery / factory not only for what happens in the bakery, i.e. cook it a bit more when it's supposed to rain so the baguette doesn't become soft / stays crunchy. That can be done at small scale, but is difficult at industrial levels.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#17

Post by _eLRIC »

marmaduke wrote: post #11
_eLRIC wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Baker is the English word. I don't think the taste of mass produced baguettes is so bad as the lack of texture. And they are usually over cooked

A Baker makes bread but a boulanger is required to make a baguette !

I always find industrial baguettes under cooked, but you raise an important point : it all come back to personnal preferences and that's for me the special thing about the baguette, so few ingredients and so many variations in taste ...

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#18

Post by ridaj »

gumby wrote: post #6

It’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 w…

> It’s interesting that the modern baguette is such a symbol, as it’s a product of the Industrial Age

As many things that people consider iconically French (Eiffel tower, "Haussmann-style" architecture...)

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#19

Post by Ecco »

nostalgk wrote: post #9
LifeLiverTransp wrote: post #3

Is 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

Average baguette price in France is 88 cents. Not sure you could find a 35c one anywhere. Unless it was it really long while ago :-)

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#20

Post by _eLRIC »

rdtwo wrote: post #15

And here I was hoping for a good repeatable solid recipe

Here is one from a discussion in French about the recipe (automatic translation, but it seems ok)

In order to match the capacities of a robot and a household oven, let's start with 500g of flour, which will give you 4 baguettes of about 40 centimetres, the following recipe: Flour T65: 500g Water: 330 g Baker's yeast: 10g Salt: 9g

The French poolish is prepared from half the pouring water of the basic recipe; the equivalent quantity of flour is then added. This gives us for our poolish: Water: 165g (330g/2) Flour T65 : 165g

We then have to add yeast to ferment our water-flour mixture. The amount of yeast depends directly on the time we allow our poolish to ferment at room temperature (generally from 3am to 6pm). The quantities of yeast (per litre of water) are as follows: 3H: 15g 5H: 8g 8H: 5g 15H: 1 to 2g Let's keep it overnight, about 12 hours, which will give a quantity of yeast of about 2g per liter of water. As we put 165g of water (or 0.165l), the amount of yeast will be 0.33g. We see that the amount of yeast to put in a poolish over 12 hours is almost infinitesimal So let's go back to our poolish recipe which will be: Water: 165g Flour T65 : 165g Baker's yeast: 0.3g Note that you never put salt in the poolish Mix everything together, cover with a cloth and leave to work overnight. The next morning you will see your poolish full of bubbles and slightly dug in its center, a sign that it is ready. I invite you to smell the wonder you have just produced....

You will now have to add your poolish to your bread dough ingredients. All you have to do is take the basic recipe and deduct the quantities used for your poolish, i.e.: Flour T65: 335g (500g - the 165g of the poolish) Water: 165g (330g - the 165g of the poolish) Baker's yeast: 9.7g (10g - the 0.3g of the poolish), which can be rounded to 9g Salt: 9g and we add our entire poolish to it. Then continue in the classic way. Remember to cover the dough and dough pieces well during rest periods to prevent them from crushing. Don't hesitate to bake your bread well; barely browned white bread seems to be out of fashion (except in baking terminals and supermarkets) and that's good.

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