Made in France traditionally, a baguette is a long (about 0.3 m) thin, round loaf with four to six diagonal cuts across the surface.
The crust is very crisp and the cuts have a typical ragged edge. Baguette should be made only with lean doughs that produce a crisp crust. The crumb is open and non-uniform.
French bread and baguettes are commonly manufactured by the straight baking procedure and using a very simple formulation consisting of flour, water, salt, yeast and malt.
The bread machine makes a French bread that is light and airy due to the mechanical action of the kneading blade, a type of mixing that just cannot be produced by hand. It also enables the dough to stay more moist, resulting in a thin, crisp crust.
The baguette was introduced in the 1920s after a new law banned French bakers from working before 4 a.m. Bakers like it because it was convenient to make and stayed fresh for only a few hours.
Hence, customers visited bakers two or three times a day. Consumers liked the baguette because it was whiter and sweeter compared with sourdough breads. Some accounts suggest that ‘the very thin long baguette’ was introduced to urban diners in the nineteenth century and to the provinces on the twentieth century.
French bread of baguette
