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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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