alt Hacker NewsAll I want to know is why are Parisian baguettes so good? From this article I get that they are a low-gluten bread. But can that be all? I've always suspected a secret variety of wheat.
In all my life and travels I've never had bread nearly as good as the French baguette and I've always wondered why.
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The strain of yeast, and the local water have a pretty big impact on the finished bread (in addition to the flour used, obviously).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0U8RdRdFDU
do this. thank me later. (yes, it takes multiple days!). as good as when we hop over to France.
Long, slow fermentation using cultured yeast and a special Viennese style steam oven are essential for baguettes. They traditionally use soft French flour, but I'm not sure it makes the difference. The downside of baguettes is they don't last more than a day, but that's ok in France because there's a boulangerie on every corner. Baguettes are not homemade bread. Brioche is homemade and just as wonderful and far better than the garbage Brits/Americans make and call brioche for their burger buns.
The first thing I noticed travelling to France as a Brit is everything you eat is delicious. This has changed a bit now; they have McDonald's in France now. But 30 years ago it was mostly true. You could buy a sandwich from a railway station and it would be the best sandwich of your life. It took me a while to realise why. The British and American way to prepare food is to take any old crap but use just one or two strong flavours like bacon, cheese, pickle etc and let it carry the whole thing. The French way (and even more so Italian for that matter) is to take a handful of already delicious ingredients and combine them into something greater than their parts. French sandwiches taste good because the bread tastes good, the butter tastes good, the ham tastes good, and the cheese tastes good. That's the secret.
I don’t know how common it is in France, but you can ferment a baguette for 3 days and it makes a big difference.
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French bread is just normal bread, while most other places seem to use the Chorleywood process now, which produces something different.
You can find bread as good as French bread in other places, like some Belgian bakeries but definitely not all of them, or in Vietnam and much of North Africa.
It's really just that much of the Western world seems to have moved to the Chorleywood process because it's cheaper while France has laws to prevent it.