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The Perfect French Baguette

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Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#21

Post by r00fus »

_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…

We buy a bunch and freeze the ones we don't use. Pop it back in the oven for 20m and you have something almost as good as first-day bread. For convenience (it reduces quality a bit) we pre-cut some of the ones to be frozen so we can just pop them in the toaster oven.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#22

Post by bluedino »

When I was a kid, we'd go to the Amish stands at the farmers market and get fresh made loaves of bread (just white bread), dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, strawberry jam...it was dirt cheap and delicious, even if it wasn't a baguette (which I love).

Now that farmers markets are 'in', you can go there and get the same stuff. But it's so marked up it's not funny. 12 dinner rolls for $5.50? $8.00 for a jar of jam? A loaf of bread for $4.00!

My grandmother is long gone but I guess I could get some mason jars and research on the internet, make my own jam and can it. I can already make bread, but only bother to do it a few times a year.

I'm sure in another generation or so it will be a black art. Very few people do that sort of thing anymore, but if you went back 60 years, everyone did it.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#23

Post by chrisseaton »

bluedino wrote: post #22

When I was a kid, we'd go to the Amish stands at the farmers market and get fresh made loaves of bread (just white bread), dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, strawberry jam...it was dirt cheap and delicious, even if it wasn't a baguette (which I love). Now that farmers markets are 'in', you can go there and get the same stuff. But it's so marked up it's not funny. 12 dinner rolls for $5.50? $8.00 for a jar of jam? A loaf…

> Very few people do that sort of thing anymore

Bread and jam making and baking seems like probably the single most popular hobby for young women and many young men, next to something like running, from what I see from Facebook friends. Baking is also the subject of a major internationally popular TV competition for years. I can’t see why you’d think it was likely to become a black art.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#24

Post by wil421 »

bluedino wrote: post #22

When I was a kid, we'd go to the Amish stands at the farmers market and get fresh made loaves of bread (just white bread), dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, strawberry jam...it was dirt cheap and delicious, even if it wasn't a baguette (which I love). Now that farmers markets are 'in', you can go there and get the same stuff. But it's so marked up it's not funny. 12 dinner rolls for $5.50? $8.00 for a jar of jam? A loaf…

Find a French Cafe run by a Frenchman. I used to go to one by my old job that sold loaves and half loaves. He had a sign that read “Life’s too short to eat bad bread”. The prices were reasonable for everything.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#25

Post by mumblemumble »

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…

Plenty of national symbols are products of the industrial age. England and ale that doesn't taste sour comes to mind as another example. Or, hey, the USA and cars.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#28

Post by mumblemumble »

rdtwo wrote: post #15

And here I was hoping for a good repeatable solid recipe

I put a lot of time into perfecting my baguettes. Well, not perfecting, but getting them to the point where they don't make me anxious.

I don't think reliably good baguette is as simple as a recipe. The recipe conveys very little of what goes into it. It takes a lot of practice to get down all the manual techniques. Just learning how to knead the bread properly is an art in and of itself, and, even if you use a mixer, you'll still need to experiment with the speed and mix time to get things dialed in. A lame can be a tricky thing to work with, and your slashing technique will show through in the final product. Pre-shaping and shaping the bread takes practice, and, unless you're really into climate control at your house, learning how to adjust ingredient quantities and rise times to account for changes in temperature and humidity is a science in and of itself. You'll have to fiddle with the bake time and temperature and steaming technique to figure out what works best in your oven.

Baguette is the pale lager of breads: Most the flavor comes from the technique, and the ingredients - four simple ingredients, very nearly the same four simple ingredients - have such delicate flavors on their own that there's not really anywhere for even the slightest mistake to hide.

Which isn't to say that you shouldn't do it. But I would say that you should do it because you sincerely love the process of baking bread, not simply because you enjoy eating the final product.

FWIW, one of my favorite books on the subject is Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. The recipes are mostly meant for baking on a commercial scale, but the book also covers everything you need to know to adapt them to your home kitchen.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#29

Post by ska »

entee wrote: post #7
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.

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 re…

There is nothing specific about french bread there - basically any bread produced at an industrial scale is noticeably inferior to the equivalent "human scaled" version if that exists (not always true). Sometimes shockingly so.

I suspect if anything was as elementary as "it's the kneading" they would have figured out a way to mimic the better technique. It's more likely that the logic of the industrial scale process itself is inimical to some of the finer points of producing top-shelf breads.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#30

Post by ska »

ceejayoz wrote: post #4
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…

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.

It's perhaps worth noting that in your examples also (hams, cheeses, whisky, etc.) the very best stuff is far more likely to be small batch and eschews many of the "industry standard" approaches for larger producers.

The reasons may well be similar to bread.

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