Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Perfect French Baguette

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 80 posts

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#41

Post by dgacmu »

ska wrote: post #29
entee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which could be economics: at industrial scale, the relative cost of the ingredients is much higher than the cost of labor. at smaller scale, the labor cost starts to outweigh. so an industrial manufacturer is more tempted to cut costs on ingredient quality. Even if that quality reduction is primarily in service of variance reduction (i.e., going with a wheat supplier who can guarantee availability in large quantities year round, instead of continuously needing to tweak recipes to work with different wheats).

In many cases, the extra delay between production and consumption of a large industrial manufacturer also leads them to pursue solutions that improve shelf-stability.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#42

Post by Pfhreak »

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…

I'd pay those prices for something I knew was made with quality ingredients and when I knew the money was going directly to the producer of a good. Heck, I've paid $10-12 for a loaf of bread from some of the places around here and not regretted a single penny.

I'd rather have small business farmers, bakers, and jam makers around, and although it costs me more I know that less of the money is headed to big food conglomerates.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#43

Post by corodra »

joshuak wrote: post #40
paulific wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quotes in the Wired article are all kind of the opposite though. For example: "Today, 99.9 percent of humanity cannot beat the best commercial software at blitz chess. Within the decade, it's likely the machine on your desk will know how to play chess better than any human has played the game since its invention in AD 600." I suppose that really just makes your point though. Even in 1995 we were only really tryin…

> Even in 1995 we were only really trying to delay the inevitable. Do people do this? Are there really people out there that are resistant to believing that machines can or eventually will outperform humans in any discrete task? I can see a reasonable doubt about general intelligence, but other than that surely every mechanical advance since the plow paints a clear trajectory. These kinds of articles always strike me…

Fair assertion. One I mostly agree with too.

But, what's the point then? I mean, if there's no point in pursuing anything because a machine will always be better and no one is going to appreciate anything handmade anymore... What's the point? To... eat, sleep and die?

I personally don't understand why a good portion of the population nowadays is okay with the idea that humans will be obsolete.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#44

Post by tasogare »

ttul wrote: post #37
tasogare wrote: post #32

Some Japanese are also really good at the craft: https://www.google.fr/amp/s/www.lexpress.fr/styles/saveurs/l...

The Japanese always manage to excel at importing delicacies and perfecting them. Take for example Japanese whiskey, which is renowned and considered by some to be superior to the Scottish variety.

Well, in the case of bread, no. It's hard to find even decent bread here. But a lot of them are indeed learning very well to make good bread and pastry making in France. A least one baker in my region is taking advantage of this focused and hardworking workforce.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#45

Post by titanomachy »

chrisseaton wrote: post #23
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.

You might have different social circles from the person you're replying to.

For what it's worth, a large number of my friends also seem to be obsessed with making bread.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#46

Post by charles_f »

tomlockwood wrote: post #39

> In addition to winning this illustrious competition, Bouattour and M’Seddi have a few other things in common. Both forewent the traditional trade school that many aspiring French bakers enter at age 16. Both have been professional bakers for less than a decade (as has this year’s winner, former engineer Fabrice Leroy). And both are first-generation Frenchmen with what Bouattour euphemistically dubs ‘origins’: famil…

What I've always found interesting as a Frenchman living in North Americ, is that there's no real equivalent to "black american" or "afro American" or "hispano American" in French. The closest you'll find is "of Tunisian origins", but that's usually left out, and not really the same.

The "official" results[0] don't mention anything about his origins. The local press[1] does say his parents are from Tunisia, but only after introducing him as a Parisian. The right national press[2][3] does mention that he is... a chemist, which seems more relevant to the story than the country in which his parent were born.

Surely this is an anecdote, but it does match the general observation I've made. (although be sure that would he have killed a person rather than cooked a baguette, his origins would be of the utmost importance for the story telling).

[0] https://www.paris.fr/pages/goutez-et-choisissez-la-meilleure... [1] http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-il-fait-la-meilleure... [2] https://www.bfmtv.com/societe/la-meilleure-baguette-de-paris... [3] http://www.lefigaro.fr/sortir-paris/2018/04/13/30004-2018041...

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#47

Post by ridaj »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #31

This article reads like the quotes in https://www.wired.com/1995/02/chess/ about how computers would never beat people at chess. Winning at chess required "fantasy" and "creativity" and here baking requires "passion" and "magic". https://www.cnet.com/news/bread-making-robot-makes-everyone-... is a fully-automated bakery, although it doesn't produce baguettes, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zfb456YrsM is half-au…

There is a lot of decent industrially-produced baguette. Here's an example showing an automated line for forming baguettes from dough: https://youtu.be/qVB5EOAJT1w

Btw I don't know if the comparison with chess is right. Maybe I would think of the cooking arts as any other art, like painting or sculpture - nobody is the "best" at art. Once a certain point is passed in terms of mastery of the technique, at the high end, the kinds of things that set apart different artists tend to be very subjective, and subject to changing tastes. Not to say machines can't do decent art, but perhaps it's a game where it is harder to define the rules...

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#48

Post by bobjob »

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…

How long does it take you to make 12 dinner rolls? - More than 15 min of work? Then 5.50 sounds OK to me. - More than 30 min of work? Now 5.50 are a bargain!

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#49

Post by yardie »

wil421 wrote: post #24
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.

Funnily enough, one just opened a restaurant in my neighborhood, Miami. In a town bustling with so many tourists from France and Quebec you wouldn't think it would be this hard to find decent French food. But a lot of "french" bakeries are just passing reheated Costco pastries with an incredible markup. So it's been a treat to get French macarons that don't cost an arm; the nearest Laudurée charges ~$4 each.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#50

Post by _ZeD_ »

bobjob wrote: post #48
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…

How long does it take you to make 12 dinner rolls? - More than 15 min of work? Then 5.50 sounds OK to me. - More than 30 min of work? Now 5.50 are a bargain!

Why do you think making a dinner roll should be billed at the same rate of your job?
Post reply on HN