The baguette

There is probably no bakery product more characteristic of France than the baguette. Whether you buy a baguette tradition, a baguette normale or a baguette à l'ancienne at the bakery, you will always end up with an unmistakable long, narrow bread with longitudinal cuts forming the characteristic ‘ears‘, a soft, moist crumb with large pores and a toasted, crispy crust.

There are countless recipes and processes for making baguettes, perhaps united only by the resulting shape. However, if you want to try a traditional French baguette or li pain de tradition française, the options narrow down slightly. According to Le Décret Pain (or the Bread Law) of 1993, a traditional baguette should be made with only three basic ingredients - wheat bread flour, water and salt. The recipe must not contain any improvers or additives and the final product must not be frozen at any point in the production process.

If you miss yeast in your recipe, the law thinks about this too. Traditional bread can be leavened with either regular baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), natural yeast or a combination of the two. And what do we mean by natural yeast? Wheat or rye yeast, an active leaven, primarily containing lactic acid bacteria and natural yeasts, which are able to sufficiently leaven the dough. A baguette made using only natural leaven is called a baguette au levain. If, for the sake of volume or to speed up the production process, you would like to use a little yeast in such a product, you may do so, but the amount must not exceed 0.2% by weight of the flour used.