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Comment by giardini | Hacker News Reader

All 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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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.

I don't think that's the only reason. Here in Germany, you can also buy that fluffy white bread—usually wrapped in plastic—that's probably made that way. But most bread in Germany is still produced the traditional way, especially since it's often not pure wheat bread but rather rye bread or mixed-grain bread. Still, a real French baguette is unbeatable. Maybe it's the quality of the flour. But I'm sure it's mainly the very long resting time before baking. In my experience, that's also what makes pizza dough especially soft and flavorful.

You can get soft bread in Norway that is much like the stuff that is ubiquitous in the UK but it is marketed for making toast. Most of the rest is much more interesting, and I'm sure better for you.

You can buy non-chorleywood bread from bakers and from most supermarkets in the UK (look for their 'sourdough' loaves, some might even give a fermentation time)

But French bread is still particularly good somehow, there is just nothing like a fresh baguette from a baker in a small village in rural France.

So there's something else going on there IMHO. Specifically with baguettes.

(I wish I could find a good baguette here in Western Australia, most of them are utter trash. As are most of the croissants, though I was able to find a specialist baker for those so not all is lost...)

It is mostly the freshness. There is a reason it all comes from small local bakeries - it has to be made that morning. Even by the afternoon it will not be as good.

I learned to bake when I lived in London, because the average bread was simply awful. It's surprisingly easy to get something as good at home, as long as you have a decent dutch oven.

It really makes me wonder what else is going on everywhere else, because it really comes down to just flour, water, salt, and yeast.

The process is more important than the ingredients.

I thought so too. When I started, I was obsessed with getting every variable and every step of the process just right. I measured and documented everything: The number of folds, the humidity in the room ...

Then I discovered Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe, which gave me virtually the same results, for a grand total of 5 minutes of active work.

Socrates always used to inspect his dough before adding the yeast. The unexamined loaf is not worth leaven.

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.

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.

The strain of yeast, and the local water have a pretty big impact on the finished bread (in addition to the flour used, obviously).

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.

Long fermentation with little sourdough is making a come back in France (e.g the Respectus Panis thing) but I would think it's harder to apply to baguettes for professional bakers looking at how many they churn a day. That would be a lot of proofing bread to store.

It's usually less about a secret wheat variety and more about the specific flour grading (like French T65) and a strict traditional process.

The long, slow fermentation allows those complex flavors to develop naturally. Combine that high hydration with a really hot, steam-injected oven, and you get the sudden expansion needed for that perfect crispy crust and open crumb...

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