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The Perfect French Baguette

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Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#71

Post by wrycoder »

mumblemumble wrote: post #28
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…

Wonderful. Quoting from the baguette recipe:

"The simplest breads are the most difficult to produce, and the baguette is high on the list of simple breads, in that it is made with a minimum of simple ingredients; there are no strong flavors that dominate, and it is above all the flavor of the flour that prevails. Properly made, it is magnificent, poorly made, it is bland and insipid. One of the more beautiful aspects of the baguette is the amount of crust it has. A finished baguette should have a rich, russet crust, crackling and fragrant -- don't underestimate the virtue of a bold bake. At the same time, the crumb should be creamy and aromatic, with a cell structure characterized by lots of random-sized holes, with translucent cell walls (if the holes are big enough to hide a mouse, though, your shaping skills need some attention)."

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#72

Post by rdtwo »

mumblemumble wrote: post #28
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…

Oh I get you, been baking bread for my wife since before we got married. Started with the bread machine, got a fancier machine, then transitioned to sour dough and after all these years and a couple hundred loves later I’m finally making a product I’m at least somewhat happy with. There is always some detail that isn’t mentioned that comes to bite you in the butt and causes the recipe to come out wrong.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#73

Post by Glawen »

ur-whale wrote: post #68
new2628 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside of this French attitude of everyone being "just French" is that the earlier diversity of identities/languages has also been largely homogenised. Think Alsacian, Languedoc, etc. The effect reaches well beyond France: as other countries fell in love with the model, they went after their own historical ethnic/linguistic minorities with the same determination throughout the 20th century.

>has also been largely homogenised You say it like it's a bad thing.

why is it a good thing. For Alsace, the goal of the french state was clear: kill the alsatian culture so that alsatians do not side anymore with the germans. This began by prohibiting children to speak alsatian. Now, the new generation cannot speak it anymore and cannot understand their neighbours (Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland). They have to learn German in school, and they are not particularly good at it. It is a shame, as it would be a nice advantage for them in the current EU.

The same happened for other regions (Bretagne, Languedoc, Corsica, Pays basque).

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#74

Post by newen »

philipps wrote: post #64
_ZeD_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The comment you replied to didn’t mention a specific rate, but in general, linking price to cost of production (including human time) makes a lot of sense. I don’t understand why the two comments before yours are getting downvoted.

It seems like nonsense because "How long would it take for you to acquire a dozen eggs? First, you have to buy chickens, wait for the eggs to hatch etc. Therefore, you should be okay with paying an amount at the rate you're getting paid for that amount of time."

Yeah, let's just throw basic economics principles out the window, shall we.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#75

Post by seren »

Glawen wrote: post #73
ur-whale wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>has also been largely homogenised You say it like it's a bad thing.

why is it a good thing. For Alsace, the goal of the french state was clear: kill the alsatian culture so that alsatians do not side anymore with the germans. This began by prohibiting children to speak alsatian. Now, the new generation cannot speak it anymore and cannot understand their neighbours (Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland). They have to learn German in school, and they are not particularly good at it. It is…

I believe what ur-whale is saying is that cultural homogenization, is often seen as bad things for the short term for people that have to endure it, but relatively for the long term it creates more homogeneous region with a shared culture.

For example, the Roman Empire destroyed or assimilated hundreds of smaller culture, but it also have the long term effect of creating a common ancestor culture for most of Europe.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#76

Post by [deleted] »

charles_f wrote: post #46
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…

[deleted]

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#77

Post by tomlockwood »

homonculus1 wrote: post #70
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…

>For all the rhetoric on the right about how people from other cultures are not "suitable" for "western" countries - some of the proudest citizens and torch-carriers for tradition, are foreigners. That's not quite right--the premise you're I think you're alluding to is that certain cultures themselves are not compatible with the values of Western society. But people like the bakers featured here, who choose to assimi…

What do you think isn't quite right?

The article states that the bakery was in an area with a large "tunisian origin" population - which I think the right might say is an enclave - and if their views had more nuance they might say was a cheap area where immigrants tended to settle.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#78

Post by homonculus1 »

tomlockwood wrote: post #77
homonculus1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For all the rhetoric on the right about how people from other cultures are not "suitable" for "western" countries - some of the proudest citizens and torch-carriers for tradition, are foreigners. That's not quite right--the premise you're I think you're alluding to is that certain cultures themselves are not compatible with the values of Western society. But people like the bakers featured here, who choose to assimi…

What do you think isn't quite right? The article states that the bakery was in an area with a large "tunisian origin" population - which I think the right might say is an enclave - and if their views had more nuance they might say was a cheap area where immigrants tended to settle.

Rent is surely one of many factors but there are other factors and consequences of a population group concentrating in one area, it's not in a vacuum. If those immigrants by and large do not assimilate into French/Western culture, then in that case they are indeed forming an enclave.

Since the individuals in this story are eagerly assimilating, they are independent of the questions of whether these immigrant enclaves are real or whether they're compatible with French culture. They're only a counterexample if you conflate mainstream right-wing expectations of immigrants with hardcore Stormfront narratives, e.g. that foreigners are mentally inferior and incapable of adapting to a different culture.

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#79

Post by tomlockwood »

homonculus1 wrote: post #78
tomlockwood wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think isn't quite right? The article states that the bakery was in an area with a large "tunisian origin" population - which I think the right might say is an enclave - and if their views had more nuance they might say was a cheap area where immigrants tended to settle.

Rent is surely one of many factors but there are other factors and consequences of a population group concentrating in one area, it's not in a vacuum. If those immigrants by and large do not assimilate into French/Western culture, then in that case they are indeed forming an enclave. Since the individuals in this story are eagerly assimilating, they are independent of the questions of whether these immigrant enclaves…

I'm eager to hear what you think I'm incorrect about.

Clearly the baker in the story, who wins, lives in what most people would call an ethnic enclave (if such a thing exists). There's an expectation on the right that it's easy to identify when an immigrant is "one of the good ones" but that identification tends to be done at a comfortable distance, that doesn't tell people on the right anything about the people they're actually judging. As a result, the default view is that immigrants often aren't integrating, and that's bad. That's not a stormfront view - that's a very mainstream right wing view. The truth is that immigrants often desperately want to integrate, and that culture, and even celebrating and maintaining one's culture, is not incompatible with integration. People can and do have both. St Patrick's day doesn't stop people from celebrating the 4th of July. The difference between integrating and not integrating, from the signals given off by the right, is approximately 50-60 years. Suddenly, the Irish in NYC have all mysteriously integrated for some reason, when back in the 1850s they weren't integrated. So strange how that works, right?

Re: The Perfect French Baguette

#80

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

Kuinox wrote: post #33
Ecco wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

They often sell low quality baguette along with the high priced one.

Low quality baguett -> white bread in baguett shape, not a baguett. There is a price point where the product is no longer the same product. And factory produced goods always go low.
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