The baguette - France's gift to the world
A fine loaf of plain French bread, the long crackly kind a Frenchman tucks under his arm, as he hurries home to the family lunch, has a very special quality. Its inside is patterned with holes almost like a Swiss cheese, and when you tear off a piece it wants to come sideways; it has body, chewability, and tastes and smells of the grain." Mastering the Art of French Cooking vol.2
I am fasting today, but I will have a little bit of the pumpkin soup we had the other day. As will my husband - though he will have rather more than me. And he will have it with some Coles rustic baguette - which is almost as good as genuine French baguette - but not quite. So I am missing out, and I shall have to watch him eat it. And the other day whilst at the doctor's on a routine visit, and after being congratulated on losing so much weight - when I told him that I was about to go to France and was not going to diet whilst there, he told me to lay off the carbohydrates. "No baguettes?" I wailed. "Well not a whole one" he said. As if I would eat a whole baguette! Though possibly, almost. Anyway these two rather sad little things in my life made me think to write about the baguette. France's gift to the world. Anywhere the French have been - and even where they have not been the baguette is a popular thing. Though there eat of us never seem to be able to get it right. I gather that in Vietnam the baguette is very popular - and indeed, here in Australia we have many Vietnamese/French bakeries. So maybe they get it right - I should try one - there's one in Doncaster Shopping Town.
I think the rest of us don't get it right because we don't have the right ovens. Well that's my theory anyway. I remember reading in Mastering the Art of French Cooking:
"Baker's ovens are so constructed that one slides the formed bread dough from a wooden paddle right on to the hot, fire-brick oven flour, and a steam-injection system humidifies the oven for the first few minutes of baking. Steam allows the yeast to work a little longer in the dough and this, combined with a hot baking surface, produces an extra push of volume. In addition, steam coagulating the starch on the surface of the dough gives the crust its characteristic brown colour."
Their solution is to place a brick, wrapped in a damp tea towel in the oven with the bread. Not quite the same as a brick oven somehow. I think I tried it once, but the recipe is very, very daunting. It goes on for some fifteen pages!!
"The French don't snack. They will tear off the end of a fresh baguette (which, if it's warm, it's practically impossible to resist) and eat it as they leave the boulangerie." Peter Mayle
When I was young I used to spend my summer holidays on exchange holidays in the small village of Meung-sur-Loire in the Loire valley near New Orléans. My young French friend and I would be sent to buy the bread from the boulangerie - 'deux pains et une baguette' I seem to remember the daily order being. A 'pain' is slightly thicker than a baguette. Then there is also the 'ficelle' which is thinner. It would be just as Peter Mayle describes for we would take bits off the end as we went home, so that by the time we got home there was only half a baguette left. And we did this twice a day - once for lunch and once for dinner.
In the process of searching for pictures for this post I came across lots of wonderful old photographs - mostly taken by Cartier-Bresson I think, and it is extraordinary how many of them featured small children. Simone and I were not as young as them, but I guess we could have been called children. So maybe it's a French thing. The children being sent out to get the bread.
Meung-sur-Loire had several bakeries but I do remember one of them as being very old. So I did a search and there it is. I don't remember it being on its own like this, but this is definitely the place, as that is the church and the chateau in the background, and I do remember it as being at the top of the main street of the village. And I do remember the half-timbered look of it. I also found two other pictures of different bakeries in the town. These are more modern looking - as they were then too - and pretty typical of a French boulangerie, which also usually sells some pastries as well. Here are two that I found. I have no idea whether they are the same ones as when I was there.
Historically speaking the baguette was not called a baguette until the 1920s, but long thin breads were made long before then - well certainly as far back as Louis XIV, the sun king, and most likely before him too. I wonder how they came to decide that this was the best shape for bread. It's not normal after all is it? And there are rules about what you can make it with - just flour, water, yeast and salt I think. There are always rules in France. Though, I'm sure that there are lots of other versions using different grains, for example, or using sour dough. Maybe they just have to be called something else then. But France would not be France without them - as Italy would not be Italy without pasta and pizza. Indeed whilst on the subject of Italy - on the whole Italian bread is not very wonderful we have found - the best we found were baguettes - and these sold out early in the day.
"In rural areas, elderly French people still trace the sign of the cross on the bottom of their baguette with a knife before cutting it. They always keep it top side up and never, for equally mythical reasons, cut it from both ends." The Guardian
The French are said to eat 10 billion baguettes a year, which is quite a number. And surprisingly most of them - some 80% - are still bought from the local artisan boulanger. Yes the supermarkets and hypermarkets make them and sell them - and they are not bad - but definitely not as good as the ones from the boulangerie. And I love the way the baker chooses which one to give you by squeezing it gently to see if it has the right amount of crunch ( or not if they don't like you). Even in Paris there are hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands, of boulangeries. And of course there is a competition to see whose is best. In 2014 it was this young man and his wife. So that is what a perfect baguette is supposed to look like.
I can't wait to try my first French baguette. They are perfect for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even make perfect toast if you can't get it fresh. And they do have to be fresh - the go stale pretty quickly, which is why there are two bakes a day and why the French buy them twice a day. One of the questions I ask the owners of the houses I am considering renting is "Where is the nearest bakery?". It's a vital question.
So thank you France, and even if Elizabeth David seems not to like them the rest of the world does.
"Enticing though [they] look and smell as they come out of the oven, I find them lacking in savour."
But then she's always a bit of a misery in some ways.
Vive la baguette.
