BAGUETTE

/ BAGUETTE

Usually before Easter and Christmas my dad, some of us kids and sometimes the whole family would go to the Alsace to buy baguettes for the festive dinner on those holydays. It was an adventure for us kids to go across the border into France/Alsace! The language there is a mix of my dialect and French. Sometimes we had to go to multiple bakeries, since we bought a lot of baguettes, which my mom would freeze and take it out of the freezer as needed and warmed the loaves up in the oven. It was just amazing; the car was filled with the smell of fresh baked baguettes and when we came home, we sometimes ate some of the fresh baguettes or we would get a croissant when we were at the “boulangerie” (bakery). My dad was quite knowledgeable about wines and would get wines from the Alsace, which are great wines. We would go to wine stores, where he would taste wines and pick out what he liked. We would go home with multiple crates of wines and of course lots of baguettes.

Our baguette is an authentic baguette, just not as long, our oven limits us to make them longer. It is a yeast dough, and it is almost a two-hour process to start the dough and then it cold rises for 12 – 14 hours. That’s when the flavors develop. The baguette proofs two more times before baking.

It has a wonderful fresh wheat taste, and because of the cold rise it is subtle, but full-bodied. It has a nice crunch for a few hours after baking, then the crust is soft, but the crumb stays the same, nice, and fluffy! This is a bread that goes with many things, from cheese, meats, jam, honey and simply fresh by itself.