Kathy in NZ wrote:
> Yesterday I made two French Baguettes from a recipe in a Le Cordon
> Bleu cookbook I have.
>
> I have no idea how authentic it is, though my son has been making the
> same recipe for several weeks and reckons it's pretty much how they
> tasted in the month he spent in France. However, he tells me my
> baguettes are too fat.
>
> They were about 12 inches long, but it was hard to stretch the very
> elastic dough to shape them. When I read the recipe I thought it
> wouldn't work. It is just flour, yeast, water and salt, a very dry
> mixture. But it worked and it tasted great. I compared it with recipes
> on the Internet and that's all French baguettes seem to be -- no fat
> of any kind.
>
> Here's a pic of my finished bread. We had it with mussels, moules
> mariniere.
>
> http://i1.tinypic.com/mhaols.jpg

Your son's right and your breads look great but they are not baguettes.
They are French breads, just a little wider & a tad softer than a
baguette?
A French bread is a wide or "fat" baguette. This is how I have seen
them called in American supermarkets. At least in the Acme/Albertson
last week.
You seem surprised that fats are not needed. I have seen just flour and
water work.
This was with whole wheat matzoh. And the extreme of this was flour and
water to make seitan, which is not even cooked. This is a meat ersatz
or substitute product. That really surprised me in a pleasant way.