Submitted 2 weeks ago by Speedforce@multiverse.soulism.net to [deleted]
https://multiverse.soulism.net/static/media/posts/HW/8U/HW8UHi1FkZGC5M5.jpeg
Side question: Why do people buy baguettes? Do they make sandwiches with them? How do you even make a sandwich from them? How are you meant to beat a baguette????
Because the dough was a different shape before baking.
You can beat a baguette with a golf club, a truncheon, or even another baguette.
The sandwich bread is mass produced, baked in racks of loaf pans, designed to give very consistent and convenient slices for making sandwiches.
The second pic is the way many people prefer to bake a more rustic loaf. The dough is just placed on a flat sheet, so there’s much more crust, and it can just rise however it does. It’s less convenient for sandwiches.
No baguettes aren’t used for sandwiches, they’re used to serve bread with the meal. If you’re eating dinner, you don’t really want a slice of sandwich bread, you want something more convenient to hold in your hand, dip in you pasta sauce, or whatever. Plus it has a higher ratio of crust to insides, which can be nice.
No baguettes aren’t used for sandwiches
My jambon-beurre begs to differ
Apparently it’s just not a thing where I am. I’ve seen them used for little hors d’oeuvre things, but not for a meal-type sandwich.
I stand corrected.
No baguettes aren’t used for sandwiches
I’d say that they are great for making sandwiches tho
Uh what? Guess you have never been to France?
I have not and stand corrected
Now I’m curious, what did you think the baguette was used for?
Where I am, they’re very often cut into rounds and served with a meal.
Decoration, apparently. Or a fashion accessory, maybe.
We use normal bread (pic 2) for sandwiches all the time. It’s been years since I’ve had industry toast (pic 1) and only in times of desperation.
Open top sandwiches with bread 2 are basically two thirds of my food pyramid.
ELI5: it depends on how you shape it.
You can load the dough into a metallic shape and close it with a lid, and you’ll get picture 1.
Or you can make a ball out of it and leave it be on a flat surface, and it will naturally expand to look like picture 2.
Side question: narrow shape makes baguette have a more crispy texture, which many people like. It’s also usually produced using a special kind of sourdough, which makes it have unique and rich taste. People eat it as is (just biting it from one end to another) or make small open sandwiches by cutting it in slices and putting all sorts of toppings on top of them.
I saw someone just cut it down the middle and make a long skinny sandwich with one. I didn’t even know that was legal.
Try a jambon-beurre, incredibly simple, incredibly delicious.
Do they not have a sub shop on your planet?
I like the idea of the metric subway sandwich being a metre-longue
Lol, yes, it can be done, but it needs to be packed, otherwise it will likely fall apart.
(Also it’s an ungodly abomination and there are certainly better options to do this with)
Why would you want to bake in a container vs a flat surface? Why are some types of bread one shape, and others another? Is it just tradition, or is there some practical aspect?
Baking in a rectangular shape allows you to make a space efficient bread that you can easily stack and transport.
Making bread on a flat surface allows you to minimize costs of entry (not only don’t you need the forms which are relatively cheap, you can go with simpler/cheaper ovens), and this kind of bread has a more pronounced crust, which many people like.
Also, rectangular bread is harder to leaven for a long period of time as it comes with numerous technological complications down the production line. This affects the aroma composition, making rectangular bread less attractive for those who want the traditional “bread” taste.
Baguette, as I already mentioned, has a unique crust and crumb texture defined by the shape and baking conditions. Many people like it that way.
The containers can increase your breads toaster compatibility :D
But overall I guess it’s a bit like pasta: different use cases (sandwich, sides for salad or soup, as a stand alone dish / food), regions with different resources for flour, fluids, spices, … and also different kinds of utilities (metal pans weren’t easily available everywhere, all the time and they take up space) and so on.
And all these things influence how the bread tastes, looks and feels. So variety in process (container vs surface, loafs vs flat breads, handcrafted vs automatically processed, …) leads to different results with different characteristics.
E.g. I love Apulian bread. It’s a loaf with a slightly darker crust, but lighter and soft on the inside. The crust gives it a slightly bitter taste, that makes it a bit rustic (the only thing better is a freaky baked sourdough loaf).
It’s perfect for sandwiches IMHO but for french toast it’s a pain in the ass. I use pan baked toast (different density, crust and form) instead and again: perfect bread for this dish.
And then just imagine eating a Döner from half a loaf of grey bread, or toast, … blasphemy!
One’s cooked in a pan, the other not.
You can use baguettes in multiple ways like other breads, imagination is the limit.
-Cut it on the bias (at an angle), toast and use to dip in soup or mop up sauce. I do this with onion soup to top it, buttered and sprinkled with a good melting cheese, place on top of soup in bowl and broil in oven until melted and browning. Image
-Slice in half long ways, butter with a good garlic butter recipe, bake in oven until browned serve with spaghetti. Image
-Once it’s old, stale and hard, cube it up (can do it fresh too) use as croutons for salads or grind it up for bread crumbs to cook with.
Dang, that crumb is amazing. Did you bake that?
Ha! No, I’m a decent cook but a mediocre baker, that pic is from wikipedia.
The rectangular loaf was designed for packing efficiency. Once bakeries became a thing and moving bread over distances to supply people became more and more common bakers realised that bread isnt heavy, its bulky and packing efficiency was an easy way to reduce costs
Okay, why not hexagon shaped bread?
How high are you stacking your bread
Because you can stack rectangles into bigger rectangles, can’t really do that with hexagons.
IMHO, I don’t know why people buy those sliced white bread loafs. That bread is weak sauce.
That bread looks meh, but there are plenty of great white slice bread options, particularly if you’re a toast fan.
Totally agree. Sliced bread is great. But that white bread sandwich which stuff. Bleh.
Brioche is definitely for toast/french toast/samdwhiches.
I’ve only seen big loves like that for restaurants though.
Well of course, it’s bread, not sauce.
Whole grain is infinitely better.
The average american is conditioned from birth to prefer mediocre, bland, mass-produced food options with highly refined ingredients and/or highly processed foods with way too much sugar and artificial flavoring.
White bread is the lamest thing. Even “artisanal” bread in america is really just white bread in disguise, unless you know what to look for. I’ve even seen breads labeled as “with whole grains” that are actually just white bread with a few whole grains added in, just enough that they can put it on the label. I fucking hate the food industry here.
Oh, and fun fact: in Europe they call sliced bread “toast” because the only use they have for it is to toast it. Literally any other purpose and they choose a better bread.
Which country? The ingredients of a sliced white loaf vary significantly across the planet. Here in Britain it's (re)fortified with a lot of the things the bleaching process might otherwise take out, but those are pretty much the only additives. No sugar or preservatives. Keep a loaf in a warm cupboard for a week and it will visibly moulder.
But, one thing that generally doesn't vary is the price.
It's often the cheapest loaf by weight sold by any supermarket or bakery, so it's a staple for a lot of people, weak sauce or not.
Garbage tier bread.
In Brazil we have a small baguette called “French bread”! It’s very convenient and absolutely everywhere
I believe those are called Petit Pain.
At first I was impressed it exists if France, but it’s kinda obvious. Now I’ve learnt that, for 20 years of my life, I believed a bullshit story about how hundreds of years ago people in Brazil couldn’t make baguette so they sold “French Bread”
Btw, cute name for a pastry
One word: Bánh mì
Regarding your main question: you don’t fit a square in a round hole.
That’s two words.
Well lookee here fellas, it looks like we got a fancy pants that can count to 2!
Bánh mì
I mean… If that’s what you want 🤷♂️
user has been banned from !foodporn@lemmy.world
I got in trouble once for pronouncing it correctly and people thought I was just being lewd 😭
I love ordering a bánh mì with pho and dipping it.
If you have a Viet restaurant that serves things other than phó and noodles, check out a dish called “Bánh mì bo kho” - it’s a spicy beef curry dish, chunks of meat, onions, potatoes and broth that comes with the bánh mì baguette to dip.
Baguettes are delicious, use a knife if you want to do a sandwich, what’s the difficulty?
Be nice. This is No Stupid Questions.
Well, there's a number of reasons for the shape of the various bread types. The dough type - from the kind of flour used, through the resting time, fermentation time, raising agent (let it be any of a variety of yeast products, wild yeast aka sourdough starter, baking powder or baking soda, there's tons of options), how hydrated it is, and so on. The oven type and baking approach. The purpose of the bread.
Your first picture is of a standard toast or sandwich bread. It's supposed to be a fairly loose, soft bread with a soft crust and an engineered shape for easier baking - with conduction baking on all sides except the top (here conduction baking refers to the fact the sides and bottom of the bread is held in place by a heated metal tray, transferring heat directly without letting air or steam escape, resulting in the soft crust). A more industrial yeast type is used (usually dry or instant yeast), which result in relatively small gas bubbles, giving it a dense but fluffy interior. The flour is usually a light wheat flour, and both resting and fermentation times are low - that's why it's a more industrial bread, you mix the ingredients, let the mixture sit for 30-60 minutes then bake it, easily automated.
The second picture is of a sourdough loaf. This usually uses wholemeal wheat flour, often mixed with rye or other grains for better texture, and is a fairly tedious bread to make with multiple stretch and fold sequences and long resting periods, allowing lots of gluten to form, which means every stretch and fold sequence doesn't mix the dough but rather layers and shapes it. The yeast comes from a sourdough starter, and is allowed to ferment longer, which is why you get an intense flavour. It bakes quick in a Dutch oven first covered then uncovered, allowing it to fluff up but then shape a hard crust. You get much larger bubbles and an internal structure of long strands of gluten forming swirls and such.
Then the baguette, it uses a different approach to sourdough but with a similar effect. Unlike sandwich bread, the dough for baguettes - as well as what I'd call "European medium bread" (medium here meaning the hardness and bakedness of the crust) - a crispy crust that isn't as well baked as a sourdough, but also isn't soft, with a well developed gluten structure, using more predictable yeasts (again usually instant quick yeast or dry yeast, or in some areas, live yeast cubes). Mind you the baguette you're showing is more of a hypermarket style baguette that is intentionally baked to a lesser darkness, and traditional baguettes are more on the golden brown part of the scale.
Overall, the kind of flour determines the flavour, but also the raising and resting times. Some flours (especially wholemeal or grain mix flours) need more time as the more complex proteins and sugars take more time to be broken down by the yeast thus they rise slower. Hydration determines how tough the dough is to shape (e.g. pasta is only hydrated by the eggs, making it a hard, dense dough, pizza needs to be flexible so it's high hydration, and it gets extra raise in the oven as the water quickly evaporates). Yeast determines the flavour, the raising time, and in the final product, the texture and airiness. The baking method can fuck a lot with the texture. A regular convection oven can dry the crust out making it tough and thick, forming quickly and stopping the bread from rising, but adding some ice in a pan at the bottom can generate enough steam to let the bread rise properly by delaying the crust hardening. Same idea for sourdough using a Dutch oven, you create a high moisture environment, a steam box, to keep the crust soft while the bread rises, then remove it at the end so the crust can cripsen and brown. The sandwich bread is medium hydration thus it keeps the sides moist while they bake, giving it that brown but soft crust. If you were to plop the same dough just into the oven, without the baking shape, due to there being little to no gluten development, it would just fall apart and harden into the world's shittiest giant cookie.
But also you can bake bread in a Dutch oven over an open fire, giving a more rustic style bread with thick, chewy, but also cripsy crust. Toss the same dough with lower hydration into a circle and onto an upside down pan in the same fire and you got some awesome flatbread with a nice center air pocket you can open up and stuff with meat.
Then, you can decide to just fuck it and add as much high fructose corn syrup as possible without fucking up the bread, and you get American style bread.
Beautiful answer!
A small point from someone working alongside bread industry - small bubbles in toast/sandwich bread are not due to the type of yeast used, but due to intentionally low time for second stage mixing and, as you mentioned, low time for resting and leavening. You can absolutely create huge bubbles using the very same yeast, though, if that’s your goal.
Ah, a fellow bread bro
I'm not even a bread bro, I just happen to have ADHD and got a few hyperfocus sessions into sourdough 😭
Not pictured: baguette
How are you meant to beat a baguette???
Just punch it dude, it’s just bread.
industry vs. artisan goods?
US , EU and FR variants.
Side question: Why do people buy baguettes? Do they make sandwiches with them?
Sometimes, sometimes just eat with butter. They make good toasts too.
How do you even make a sandwich from them?
Just cut it open and put the ham and cheese inside it, not much to it really. Either cut the slice in half if I’m feeling poor or fold it in two if I’m feeling rich.
Unbaked Bread is a yeast fungus building a house out of glutens, all of which very slowly expands to fit it’s container. You can shape it a lot of ways.
would you like a recipe?
If you have a good recipe, I’d suggest that your question should be restated in a form that includes that recipe.
Why do people buy baguettes?
They taste amazing
Do they make sandwiches with them? How do you even make a sandwich from them?
Cut the baguette along the length. Cut in half. You now have 2 sandwiches
For dipping in Soup, you fool
Look for baguette sandwich in DDG
You just slice it horizontally for that.
Think of a baguette as a 3 feet long sub-sandwich. Now it starts to make sense doesn’t it ?
Is this a trick question?
All depends on the shape of the pan it’s baked in.
Baguettes make good home-made garlic bread if sliced the right way.
This is literally called nostupidquestions and people are saying it’s a stupid question…??? some people just didn’t experience the same things. xkcd.com/1053/
A big reason is different texture, with the semisphere shape the middle can be fluffy while the outside is crunchy, for baguettes it’s basically a sandwich that the whole thing fits in your mouth in one orientation, so it’s a different way to eat it.
personally i eat the whole baguette.
Garlic Bread.
Why are they different shapes?
Sliced bread is made in loaf pans
Sourdough is made on a flat tray in the shape of a ball so it spreads out a bit.
Baguettes are made by a long strand of dough.
Bonus answer: the reason why sourdough and the baguette have the textured crust is due to the dough being sliced with a knife prior to baking.
I took a trip to Tahiti a couple years back, which is a French territory. Baguettes everywhere. Fellows sold sandwiches with baguettes as the bun. French toast was day old baguettes and phenomenal. Sometimes you just ate baguettes and saw people riding their mopeds with a bag of baguettes. It’s versatile and great.
You’re not supposed to beat a baguette, you’re supposed to beat people with a baguette!
It starts with people making different sizes of bread many years ago, and continues with traditions and people having different preferences.
Having one type of bread would be boring, same way having different kind of pizza’s.
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You cut a baguette down the middle to make a sandwich
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
The fact that someone have to explain this, is kinda funny
CluckN@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah this is NoStupidQuestions so we should only have high level discourse.
blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Plus, being on here it’s difficult to tell if it’s a joke or general ignorance
iamthetot@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
Not only that, baguettes go great with lots of cheeses.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
They also go great with dipping in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
And soups.
bryndos@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
https://youtu.be/N6A7VXqveC8
bstix@feddit.dk 2 weeks ago
Pro tip: Cut the baguette in a 45° angle.
It makes the first bite easier, and it looks better.
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
45° relative to what?