Why Baguettes Taste So Much Better on Holiday
The sun is shining, the grass is tickling your toes and you’re trudging along in your flip-flops to the bakery for a fresh baguette. Ahhh… La douce France… And those baguettes taste ten times better than baguettes from our Dutch supermarket. How is that possible? Luckily, Keuringsdienst van Waarde investigated it thoroughly.
Of course, our supermarkets also stock typically French baguettes. Just as gnarled and flour-dusted as the ones you know from your holidays. But when you bite into them, they still taste different.
Supermarket baguettes
And that really isn’t because you’re not sitting on a wobbly camping chair, covered in factor thirty sunscreen and buying it from a picturesque little bakery.
‘Crack’
Alain Caron, television chef and restaurant owner, knows exactly what makes those French baguettes different. It starts with the crack, he says. ‘When you break the baguette, it makes a certain sound, you smell something—that’s very important.’ The French love crusty bread, so it can spend a little longer in the oven too. Caron calls that ‘bien cuit’. And the baguettes from Dutch supermarkets, according to him, are only half-baked.
Which flour
It also comes down to the flour, Sophie learns from real French bakers on behalf of Keuringsdienst. You need T65, French flour. For croissants and pastries, a different flour is used than for bread and brioche, a flour producer explains to her. And only when you make your baguette with that specific flour is it a real French baguette. Few Dutch bakers know which flour their bread is baked with, and that amazes Menno ’t Hoen (baker at VanMenno). ‘As if you don’t know whether a wine is made from cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir.’
Long list
But it’s not only the flour that makes the difference; the French baker’s schedule is different from that of their Dutch colleague too. On one day, the dough is made; the next day, it is shaped into baguettes and baked. No bread improver, no fuss, nothing. Compare that with the ingredients list on a supermarket baguette: not just flour, water and salt, but a long list of additives.
Strictly forbidden
And a French baguette is baked fresh, whereas supermarket baguettes are essentially bake-off baguettes: they come from the freezer and are put in the oven for a little while at the supermarket. Strictly forbidden in France, says the French baker. And that is why a Dutch baguette is packed with additives, he says. Otherwise, a bake-off baguette wouldn’t taste good. It’s a shame that Keuringsdienst isn’t allowed to take a look inside a Dutch bake-off baguette producer, because none of the industrial baguette bakers they approached were keen on that.
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Source: Keuringsdienst van Waarde
