Hacker News Reader

Comment by whartung | Hacker News Reader

I have not been to Japan.

I have been to Paris.

When I was there, apparently every other store on the block was selling, essentially, ham and cheese sandwiches on a baguette. "Jambon et fromage". They had cases stacked with them.

Simply, they were amazing. I wasn't there long, but I ate several of them. In fact, the last meal I had at the airport was one of these sandwiches and it was amazing as well.

I can't put my finger on it, was it the ham, the cheese, the bread, "being in Paris", but it's been difficult to find anything comparable here. Our "sub" sandwiches are just not the same as these things. Even the sandwiches at, ostensibly, "french" bistros aren't the same.

Maybe it's the water.

But, anyway, I know what I'll be eating as soon as I return, whenever that may be.

View on HN

I've had baguettes in France, and I've had baguettes elsewhere and there is really no comparison. Baguettes in France are incredibly soft with thin crunchy shell, whereas supermarket baguettes in the US (and elsewhere) taste like a three-day-old French baguette even the day they're made. You need a very sharp knife to cut them up, they're like rocks. It is very disappointing.

In general, it is very hard to find good bakery goods in the US outside of local artisan shops. A lot of people have just come to expect that to be the case (like "of course supermarkets have low quality baked goods!") but that just isn't the case in much of continental Europe, boring supermarkets have amazing bakery stuff.

The closest thing I've found to a "basically acceptable" mass-produced (i.e. available almost everywhere) bread in the US is Sara Lee Artesano (white) or Sara Lee Classic Wheat Bread. They aren't sweet or artificial tasting. Taste like a normal €1.20 bread. Unfortunately you are paying a premium compared to standard bread in Europe while tasting comparable.

PS - Still never found someone selling tijgerbrood/Dutch Crunch/Tiger bread in the US which is super strange, that stuff is delicious.

Dutch crunch is a very popular bread for sandwiches in the SF Bay area.

There's this collective Stockholm Syndrome in the US. People don't realize how bad just normal things like bread or vegetables taste. Start calculating this stuff in PPP and I think we'll find the median American is not doing so well.

I live in Germany next to the border and often go to France on the weekend for food shopping etc. - it's really remarkable that you can buy a perfect Parisian baguette, then go 5 miles to the east, buy a baguette at a German bakery and it will be a completely different, worse thing. And it's vice-versa for whole grain or sourdough bread. Extremely tasty and well put together texture wise at the German bakery, but bland and almost tasteless if you go 5 miles to the west. Exceptions apply.

(Fucking this.)

I love baguettes, but have NEVER had a good one outside of France, even in Europe. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places :shrug:

I live in London and have not had one decent baguette here, even from the so-called "French" bakeries/boulangeries. So extremely bready and tough, yuck.

It shouldn't be too difficult -- there are French bakers importing French ingredients in London, which has a fairly large French community.

Try searching in French for recommendations.

https://www.uneparisiennealondres.com/post/best-of-baguettes...

https://london.frenchmorning.com/best-baguette-london-2019-f...

etc.

Thanks, appreciate the links, I'll check them out!

FWIW I live in an area with a reasonably sized French community and the couple of people I've spoken to have steadfastly refused to give their stamp of approval to any commercial establishment :D

We call that terroir. Bread isn't just bread - it's made from flour milled a certain way, made from a certain kind of wheat, that grew in a certain kind of soil, combined with a certain kind of yeast, a certain kind of salt, a certain kind of water. Ham isn't just ham - it's a certain kind of pig, raised in a certain way, that had a certain kind of diet. Cheese isn't... well you get it.

You're not tasting just 3 ingredients.

Butter. The secret ingredient is butter.

A few years ago, I spent about six months living in Paris and ate dozens, if not hundreds, of these sandwiches. My conclusions were:

- the bread is very crisp, light and fresh. It’s never heavy, doesn’t have other add-ons like oats or rye, and is never toasted or cooked

- a generous amount of butter is added. This is what adds that special flavor and makes the sandwiches taste amazing

There is no butter in baguettes in France. It's actually forbidden by law.

Butter is added on the sandwich, not in the baguette itself as an ingredient.

Yet you said ingredient.

The secret ingredient is an expression that does not literally mean "the ingredient inside the bread."

Regardless of that, the word ingredient can certainly be used to mean the components added to a sandwich. I thought this was obvious by the context, but apologies if that wasn't clear.

Not sure why you're misinterpreting the parent post like that. It's obviously on the baguettes (or for the pedants, between the two slices).

Not sure why you're misinterpreting my comment. The parent post explicitly states "ingredient", not "spread".

An ingredient of the sandwich, which consists of more than only the bread.

The butter is good, but it's really that attention has been paid to all ingredients. And the bread is just really good.

This sounds suspiciously accurate. I have no memory of butter being in the sandwich, but that would not surprise me at all.

It's not like these are fancy. They're not novel. They're everywhere, and they collectively makes hundreds of them, in advance, to an apparently insatiable market. And I have no doubt that the shopkeepers are as lazy as they can be, just like all shopkeepers, just like all of us, putting in just enough effort to meet the need and no more. Just some guy making sandwiches from routine, local ingredients.

As I mentioned also, the one in the airport was good. The airport! That bastion of fine dining world wide.

But, yea, they left a mark. They're wonderful.

Butter salt and MSG are the chefs secret weapons

The key is the presence of discerning customers who have high expectations.

It's a mix of competition and spending a lifetime perfecting your craft. There's just a different standard of quality when it comes to food in Paris, especially bread.

Every time I hear people rave about paris, I wonder if I saw a completely different world. I found the food mediocre and particularly pricy.

Conversely, I found Italy and Spain absolutely amazing for the back then non - affluent student that I was

I ate a bunch of those in Paris, too. It's the bread, for sure.

I feel like I had that experience in Brussels. Its as if the sandwich started with a chance to be perfect, and nothing in that simple construction gave up any demerits.

Saved this comment just in case I hit France in the future.

Just find yourself one without the cheese. It's plain "jambon-beurre" (ham and butter). Sometimes it comes with pickles (but not sweety sweet pickles, vinegar infused pickles instead).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jambon-beurre

Reply on news.ycombinator.com