Raymond S. Wise wrote:

> I just took a look at the entry "French bread" in several online
> dictionaries. None of them appears to cover what is traditionally
> called "French bread" in the US. In particular, the dictionary
> definitions refer to a crisp crust, but as it is traditionally made
> in the US, French bread has a crust which is hardly more crisp than
> that of an ordinary American loaf of bread.

That seems to be a good description of what is called "French bread" in
Australian supermarkets. It has absolutely no crunchiness, and its only
similarity to a baguette is the shape. It's made in only small
quantities, presumably because nobody who has ever tasted it would ever
bother to buy it again.

On the other hand, we have a few (not many) "French bread shops",
usually run by Vietnamese, and many of these make genuine baguettes. The
trick to it, I'm told, is to have the sort of oven that can get hot
enough. The air inlet has to be placed properly with respect to the
prevailing wind, and you get the best bread on windy days.

One disadvantage of a baguette, and indeed of French bread in general,
is that it goes stale very quickly. It's therefore essential to buy the
bread just before the meal, and to throw away what's left; there's no
question of saving half a baguette for tomorrow. (This also is why
French bread is unsuitable for sandwiches that you can take to work. By
lunchtime, your sandwich is stale.) This means, of course, that a
baguette is unsuitable for a person living alone, unless you have a
prodigious appetite. When I lived briefly in France, my solution was to
buy a "ficelle" on the way home from work and use it for the evening
meal. The ficelle is similar to a baguette but is very much thinner, so
it's just the right size for one person's worth of sandwich.
Unfortunately, I've never been able to buy une ficelle anywhere in
Australia.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org

Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
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