French
bread is perhaps the most frequently-eaten
food item in all of France. French
bread is a simple low-fat white
flour bread, which is baked into
long slender loaves called baguettes.
The shape of the baguette allows
the maximum amount of dough to be
exposed directly to heat during
the baking process, which produces
a thick crust favored by the French,
as well as many others. Most baguettes
are around 2-3’ in length,
and 3-5” in thickness.
Cornell professor Steven Kaplan,
who has studied the history of French
bread for many years, offers the
following description of a well-crafted
French bread:
“When you squeeze it, its
golden brown crust should crackle
and even sing. Its aroma should
be a little bit sweet, a little
bit toasty. There should be a good
marriage between its crust and its
interior crumb. When the crumb is
pressed, it should spring back rapidly.
Its color should be off-white and
its cavities widely distributed
and uneven in size. Its nutty, buttery
taste should be both sweet and savory
- like a good chardonnay.”
Because the French take such pride
in their country’s culinary
heritage, and bread is purchased
fresh for every meal, actual national
law dictates that ‘French’
bread should contain only combinations
of flour, yeast, salt and water.
However, there are of course many
variations of recipes for French
bread that use different additives,
but most still adhere to the baguette
shape and generally use a high baking
temperature (425 degrees or above).
There has been a great decline
observed in the actual standards
for French bread since the end of
the Second World War, mainly due
to the shortages of grain and other
food products that followed. These
shortages forced bread makers to
use different baking processes and
lower their expectations for quality
ingredients. When industrial advancements
allowed bread to become mass produced
in giant furnaces, these standards
were compromised even further. However,
many small companies still adhere
to age-old standards and practices
for creating authentic French breads.
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