The French Baguette Dilemma

There is something incredibly satisfying about having a loaf of bread turn out well. Along the way you have a sense that it’s going well to turn out well based on how it rises and looks and feels, but you don’t really know until you pull it out of the oven and taste it. Our first bread book has been The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, and for the most part we’ve been really impressed by it. In many ways she is a purist when it comes to bread; the bread should be as close to the original as you can make in your home kitchen. This has produced some really fun breads for us that are impressive to look at and taste fantastic (see pictures - first one is Challah bread, second one is Walnut Fogasse). On the other hand there are recipes for certain breads that don’t turn out as well. The case in point is a French baguette. In case anyone was interested in how long it takes to make this, the answer would be about 24 hours from start to finish. Most of that is just waiting around time, but still, that’s a really long time. Our first two attempts turned out looking and tasting very much like authentic French bread with the obvious exception that they only raised a little bit and were only about 1 ½ -2 inches thick. You can imagine our frustration at spending all that time for a flat loaf. Our next attempt was using Baking Illustrated’s version of it and boy-howdy did it raise so much better and tasted pretty good, but more like an Italian loaf than a French baguette. So the real question of the day is would I rather keep trying a French baguette that looks and tastes more authentic to get it to raise, or a softer fluffier loaf that doesn’t seem very authentic. Life is full of tough choices. Ultimately I think that I’d prefer to keep on trying the authentic loaf, otherwise it just seems like I should just make white bread and shape it differently to call it different loaves.