In our last episode, > , the
lovely and talented Peter Moylan broadcast on alt.usage.english:

> 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.

I made baguettes at Texas French Bread for about as long as I could stand it
-- about a year (and it is as well I gave it up because I developed, without
knowning it, an occupational disease from the constant contact with yeast
and dough). We had a gas-fired oven the size of a small apartment which
was Texas French Bread's jewel, as it had been imported at great price
and had to be refitted to work with locally available fuel and electricity
(the electricity was necessary to operate the Ferris-wheel-like device
which moved the bread in the oven to assure even baking. The result was
that no one person living knew exactly how it worked. A think that never
worked as it was supposed to was whatever provision had been made to keep
the humidity in the oven up. To get around this, the bread master used a
garden hose with a spray nozzle to add moisture to the oven.

There was a legend that the bakery had once thought of going
kosher-for-passover for one day to make passover specialties, but the Rabbi
took one look at that oven and threw up his hands. Oy! So although we
continued to make challah the rest of the year, there was no more talk of
kosher-for-passover.

One surprise I experienced when I served as bread master was the roar
of the bread as it stood in racks after it came out of the oven.
That was a good sign, I was told, because the best bread has a finely crazed
surface, and if the baguette does not crackle as it cools, it has not been
done properly.

> One disadvantage of a baguette, and indeed of French bread in general,
> is that it goes stale very quickly.

It is not so much that it is stale in the sense of old white bread. It is
very glutinous and tough when fresh and it continues to toughen, so when it
is a day old you cannot get your teeth into it, even if you have your own
teeth. A day old loaf, if uncut, will not be dry and brittle like stale
white bread, but will have the consistency and edibility of leather. It
still makes a good base for canapes if sliced very thin and toasted or makes
substantial bread crumbs, croutons, etc. That is too say, the stuff has not
become nasty and infested in so short a time as a day, its only that it is
useless as bread after more than a few hours.

> 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.

A baguette, a little cheese, a bottle of wine, and making love
will fairly sustain two people for a day or one if there is no wine
nor cheese nor love.

> 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.

--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> <http://myspace.com/larseighner>
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
--Blaise Pascal