A baguette (/bæˈɡɛt/; French: [baɡɛt] ( listen)) is a long, thin type of bread of French origin[3] that is commonly made from basic lean dough (the dough, though not the shape, is defined by French law).[4] It is distinguishable by its length and crisp crust.

A baguette has a diameter of about 5 to 6 centimetres (2–2+1⁄2 inches) and a usual length of about 65 cm (26 in), although a baguette can be up to 1 m (39 in) long.

 
Classic Baguette
In November 2018, documentation surrounding the "craftsmanship and culture" of making this bread was added to the French Ministry of Culture's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.[5] In 2022, the artisanal know-how and culture of baguette bread was inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.[6]

 

 

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Much of the history of the baguette is speculation;[7]: 35  however, some facts can be established. Long, stick-like breads in France became more popular during the 18th century,[7]: 5  French bakers started using "gruau," a highly refined Hungarian high-milled flour in the early 19th century,[7]: 13  Viennese steam oven baking was introduced to Paris in 1839 by August Zang,[7]: 12  and the Austrian Adolf Ignaz Mautner von Markhof's [de]'s compact yeast in 1867 at the Universal Exposition.[7]: 14  Finally, the word "baguette" appears to define a particular type of bread in a regulation of the department of the Seine in August 1920: "The baguette, having a minimum weight of 80 g [2+3⁄4 oz] and a maximum length of 40 cm [16 in], may not be sold for a price higher than 0.35 francs apiece".[8] No one of these events constitutes "the invention of the baguette," but together they define the modern "baguette."

In summary, "the bread which became known as the baguette first appeared in its most primitive form in the eighteenth century, then experienced several refinements and variations before being (officially) given that name in 1920."[7]: 57 

The word baguette means "wand," "baton," or "stick," as in baguette magique (magic wand), baguettes chinoises (chopsticks), or baguette de direction (conductor's baton). It was first recorded as a kind of bread in 1920.[9]

Outside France, the baguette is often considered a symbol of French culture, but the association of France with long loaves long predates it. Long, wide loaves had been made since the time of King Louis XIV, long thin ones since the mid-18th century, and by the 19th century, some were far longer than today's baguette: "... loaves of bread six feet [1.8 m] long that look like crowbars!"[10] "Housemaids were hurrying homewards with their purchases for various Gallic breakfasts, and the long sticks of bread, a yard or two [0.9 m to 1.8 m] in length, carried under their arms, made an odd impression upon me."[11]

A less direct link can be made with deck or steam ovens. These combine a traditional gas-fired oven and a brick oven, a thick "deck" of stone or firebrick heated by natural gas instead of wood. The first steam oven was brought to Paris in the early 19th century by August Zang, who also introduced Vienna bread (pain viennois) and the croissant, and whom some French sources thus credit with originating the baguette.[12]

Deck ovens heated to over 200 °C (390 °F) use steam injection to allow the crust to expand before setting, thus creating a lighter, airier loaf, and to melt the dextrose on the bread's surface, giving a slightly glazed effect.

In April 1944, a competition called Le Grand Prix de la Baguette began in France to determine who made the best baguettes.[13] Nearly 200 bakers compete each year in front of a 14-judge panel following strict guidelines. They are judged based on baking, appearance, smell, taste, and crumb. The winner receives €4000 and supplies France's president with their daily bread for that year until a new winner is chosen.[14]

Following the World Wars, French bakers began baking a whiter, softer baguette that contrasted with the darker loaves produced because of rationing during the wars. These doughs took less time to ferment and used more additives but had significantly less taste. They also began using pre-made dough and molds. The average consumption of bread fell from 600 grams/day in the early 1900s to 170 grams/day in 1986.[15]

In 1993, the French Parliament passed Le Décret Pain (The Bread Decree).[14] Le Décret Pain states that breads under the name of pain maison (homemade bread) must be "fully kneaded, shaped, and baked at their place of sale." This decree also placed strict guidelines on what pain traditionnel français (traditional French bread) is allowed to be made of, banning pre-made dough from being used for traditional French baguettes.[16]

 

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Because the history of the French baguette is not completely known, several myths have spread about the origins of this type of bread.

Some say Napoleon Bonaparte, in essence, created the French baguette to allow soldiers to more easily carry bread with them. Since the round shape of other breads took up a lot of space, Bonaparte requested they be made into the skinny stick shape with specific measurements to slide into the soldiers' uniform.[17][18][19]

Other stories credit baguettes as being an invention to stop French metro workers from having to carry knives that they used to cut their bread. The workers often fought, so the management did not want them to carry knives and requested that bread be easily ripped apart, ending the need for knives. The skinny, easily rippable shape of a baguette would have been the response to this.[17][18][19]

Some believe baguettes were the "Bread of Equality" following a decree post-French Revolution requiring a type of bread to be made accessible to the rich and poor.[17][18][19]

Another account states that in October 1920, a law prevented bakers from working before 4 am, making it impossible to make traditional round loaves in time for customers' breakfasts. Switching from the round loaf to the previously less-common, slender shape of the baguette solved the problem because it could be prepared and baked much more quickly.[20] The law in question appears to be one from March 1919, though some say it took effect in October 1920:

 

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The "baguette de tradition française" is made from wheat flour, water, yeast, and common salt. It may contain up to 2% broad bean flour, up to 0.5% soya flour, and up to 0.3% wheat malt flour.[22]

Standard baguettes, baguettes ordinaires, are made with baker's yeast, and artisan-style loaves are usually made with a pre-ferment (poolish) to increase flavor complexity and other characteristics. They may include whole-wheat flour or other grains such as rye.

Baguettes are closely connected to France, though they are made worldwide. In France, not all long loaves are baguettes; for example, a short, almost rugby ball-shaped loaf is a bâtard (literally, bastard) or a "torpedo loaf" in English; its origin is variously explained but undocumented. Another tubular-shaped loaf is known as a flûte, also known in the United States as a parisienne. Flûtes closely resemble baguettes but are about twice the size.[23]

 
Baguettes de pain
A thinner loaf is called a ficelle (string). A short baguette is sometimes known as a baton (stick), or in the UK, referred to using the English translation French stick.[24] None of these are officially defined, either legally or, for instance, in major dictionaries, any more than the baguette. French breads are also made in forms such as a miche, which is a large pan loaf, and a boule, literally ball in French, a large round loaf. Sandwich-sized loaves are sometimes known as demi-baguettes or tiers. Italian baguettes, or baguette italienne, involve more spices and a denser texture, giving the baguette a slightly different, more Italian taste.[25] Un pain viennois is much sweeter and softer than the standard baguette.[26]

 
A baker prepares baguettes for baking
In France, a baguette typically weighs around 250 g (8+3⁄4 oz), a bâtard 500 g (17+1⁄2 oz) and a ficelle 100 g (3+1⁄2 oz); no legal text establishes any of these weights, which can vary throughout the country. Baguettes, either relatively short single-serving size or cut from a longer loaf, are very often used for sandwiches, usually of the submarine sandwich type, but also a panini. They are often sliced and served with pâté or cheese. As part of the traditional continental breakfast in France, slices of baguette, known as tartines, are spread with butter and jam and dunked in bowls of coffee or hot chocolate.

Baguettes are generally made as partially free-form loaves, with the loaf formed with a series of folding and rolling motions, raised in cloth-lined baskets or in rows on a flour-impregnated towel, called a couche, and baked either directly on the hearth of a deck oven or in special perforated pans designed to hold the shape of the baguette while allowing heat through the perforations. American-style "French bread" is generally much fatter and is not baked in deck ovens but in convection ovens.

As of the 2000s, there is increasing customer demand in France for only partially baked baguettes. In 2004, the bakery chain Marie Blachère introduced the option to select three varieties of baguettes distinguished by baking time: bien cuite (well done), dorée (golden) and blanche (white).[27]

Outside France, baguettes are also made with other doughs. For example, the Vietnamese bánh mì uses a high proportion of rice flour, while many North American bakeries make whole wheat, multigrain, and sourdough baguettes alongside French-style loaves. In Cambodia, it is found in the form of a hot sandwich filled called num pang. In addition, even classic French-style recipes vary from place to place, with some recipes adding small amounts of milk, butter, sugar, or malt extract, depending on the desired flavor and properties in the final loaf.

 

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Our goal is to make Bageutte bread the only bread legal in the united states of america and france. we need your votes to ensure that this comes true.

 

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The Croissant

A croissant is a buttery, flaky, Austrian viennoiserie pastry inspired by the shape of the Austrian kipferl but using the French yeast-leavened laminated dough.[1][better source needed] Croissants are named for their historical crescent shape, the dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a thin sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry.

Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Renaissance, and crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity.[2] Kipferls have long been a staple of Austrian, and French bakeries and pâtisseries. The modern croissant was developed in the early 20th century when French bakers replaced the brioche dough of the kipferl with a yeast-leavened laminated dough.[3] In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, preformed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food that could be freshly baked by unskilled labor. The croissant bakery, notably the La Croissanterie chain, was a French response to American-style fast food,[4] and as of 2008, 30–40% of the croissants sold in French bakeries and patisseries were baked from frozen dough.[5]

Croissants are a common part of a continental breakfast in many European countries.

 

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The kipferl, the origin of croissant, can be dated back to at least the 13th century in Austria, and came in various shapes.[6] The kipferl can be made plain or with nuts or other fillings (some consider the rugelach a form of kipferl).[7]

The birth of the croissant itself—that is, its adaptation from the plainer form of kipferl, before the invention of viennoiseries—can be dated to at least 1839 (some say 1838) when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery ("Boulangerie Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris.[8] This bakery, which served Viennese specialties including the kipferl and the Vienna loaf, quickly became popular and inspired French imitators (and the concept, if not the term, of viennoiserie, a 20th-century term for supposedly Vienna-style pastries). The French version of the kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape and has become a universally identifiable shape across the world.[citation needed]

Sylvain Claudius Goy, a French chef, was the first to make croissant with yeast leavened laminated dough.[9]

Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food, found no printed recipe for the present-day croissant in any French recipe book before the early 20th century; the earliest French reference to a croissant he found was among the "fantasy or luxury breads" in Payen's Des substances alimentaires, 1853. However, early recipes for non-laminated croissants can be found in the 19th century and at least one reference to croissants as an established French bread appeared as early as 1850.[10]

Zang himself returned to Austria in 1848 to become a press magnate, but the bakery remained popular for some time afterwards, and was mentioned in several works of the time: "This same M. Zank [sic]...founded around 1830 [sic], in Paris, the famous Boulangerie viennoise".[11] Several sources praise this bakery's products: "Paris is of exquisite delicacy; and, in particular, the succulent products of the Boulangerie Viennoise";[12] "which seemed to us as fine as if it came from the Viennese bakery on the rue de Richelieu".[13]

By 1869, the croissant was well established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple,[14] and in 1872, Charles Dickens wrote (in his periodical All the Year Round) of "the workman's pain de ménage and the soldier's pain de munition, to the dainty croissant on the boudoir table"[15]

The puff pastry technique that now characterizes the croissant was already mentioned in the late 17th century, when La Varenne's Le Cuisinier françois gave a recipe for it in the 1680 - and possibly earlier - edition. It was typically used not on its own but for shells holding other ingredients (as in a vol-au-vent). It does not appear to be mentioned in relation to the croissant until the 20th century.

 

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The kipferl, the origin of croissant, can be dated back to at least the 13th century in Austria, and came in various shapes.[6] The kipferl can be made plain or with nuts or other fillings (some consider the rugelach a form of kipferl).[7]

The birth of the croissant itself—that is, its adaptation from the plainer form of kipferl, before the invention of viennoiseries—can be dated to at least 1839 (some say 1838) when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery ("Boulangerie Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris.[8] This bakery, which served Viennese specialties including the kipferl and the Vienna loaf, quickly became popular and inspired French imitators (and the concept, if not the term, of viennoiserie, a 20th-century term for supposedly Vienna-style pastries). The French version of the kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape and has become a universally identifiable shape across the world.[citation needed]

Sylvain Claudius Goy, a French chef, was the first to make croissant with yeast leavened laminated dough.[9]

Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food, found no printed recipe for the present-day croissant in any French recipe book before the early 20th century; the earliest French reference to a croissant he found was among the "fantasy or luxury breads" in Payen's Des substances alimentaires, 1853. However, early recipes for non-laminated croissants can be found in the 19th century and at least one reference to croissants as an established French bread appeared as early as 1850.[10]

Zang himself returned to Austria in 1848 to become a press magnate, but the bakery remained popular for some time afterwards, and was mentioned in several works of the time: "This same M. Zank [sic]...founded around 1830 [sic], in Paris, the famous Boulangerie viennoise".[11] Several sources praise this bakery's products: "Paris is of exquisite delicacy; and, in particular, the succulent products of the Boulangerie Viennoise";[12] "which seemed to us as fine as if it came from the Viennese bakery on the rue de Richelieu".[13]

By 1869, the croissant was well established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple,[14] and in 1872, Charles Dickens wrote (in his periodical All the Year Round) of "the workman's pain de ménage and the soldier's pain de munition, to the dainty croissant on the boudoir table"[15]

The puff pastry technique that now characterizes the croissant was already mentioned in the late 17th century, when La Varenne's Le Cuisinier françois gave a recipe for it in the 1680 - and possibly earlier - edition. It was typically used not on its own but for shells holding other ingredients (as in a vol-au-vent). It does not appear to be mentioned in relation to the croissant until the 20th century.

 

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Stories of how the Kipferl — and so, ultimately, the croissant — was created are widespread and persistent culinary legends, going back to the 19th century.[16] However, there are no contemporary sources for any of these stories, and an aristocratic writer, writing in 1799, does not mention the Kipferl in a long and extensive list of breakfast foods.[17]

The legends include tales that it was invented in Europe to celebrate the defeat of the Umayyad forces by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732, with the shape representing the Islamic crescent; that it was invented in Buda; or, according to other sources, in Vienna in 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the Ottomans by Christian forces in the siege of the city, as a reference to the crescents on the Ottoman flags, when bakers staying up all night heard the tunneling operation and gave the alarm.[16]

The above mentioned Alan Davidson proposed that the Islamic origin story originated with 20th-century writer Alfred Gottschalk, who gave two versions, one in the Larousse Gastronomique and the other in his History of Food and Gastronomy:[18]

According to one of a group of similar legends, which vary only in detail, a baker of the 17th century, working through the night at a time when his city (either Vienna in 1683 or Budapest in 1686) was under siege by the Turks, heard faint underground rumbling sounds which, on investigation, proved to be caused by a Turkish attempt to invade the city by tunneling under the walls. The tunnel was blown up. The baker asked no reward other than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped pastries commemorating the incident, the crescent being the symbol of Islam. He was duly rewarded in this way, and the croissant was born. The story seems to owe its origin, or at least its wide diffusion, to Alfred Gottschalk, who wrote about the croissant for the first edition [1938] of the Larousse Gastronomique and there gave the legend in the Turkish attack on Budapest in 1686 version; but on the history of food, opted for the 'siege of Vienna in 1683' version.[19]

— Alan Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food
This has led to croissants being banned by some Islamic fundamentalists.[20]

 

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Uncooked croissant dough can also be wrapped around any praline, almond paste, or chocolate before it is baked (in the last case, it becomes like pain au chocolat, which has a different, non-crescent, shape), or sliced to include sweet or savoury fillings. It may be flavored with dried fruit such as sultanas or raisins, or other fruits such as apples. In France and Spain, croissants are generally sold without filling and eaten without added butter, but sometimes with almond filling.

In the United States, sweet fillings or toppings are sometimes used, and warm croissants may be filled with ham and cheese, or feta cheese and spinach. In the Levant, croissants are sold plain or filled with chocolate, cheese, almonds, or zaatar. In Germany, croissants are sometimes filled with Nutella or persipan; in southern Germany, there is also a popular variety of a croissant glazed with lye (Laugencroissant). In the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the croissant is typically called a Gipfeli; this usually has a crisper crust and is less buttery than the French-style croissant.

 

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Countries and croissants

 

Argentina and Uruguay[edit]
Croissants are commonly served alongside coffee for breakfast, aperitivo (a light mid-morning meal), or merienda (a mid-afternoon meal). They are referred to as medialunas ("half moons") because of their shape and are typically coated with a sweet glaze (medialunas de manteca, "half moons of butter"). Another variant is a medialuna de grasa ("half moon of lard"), which is not always sweet.

Italy[edit]
A cousin of the croissant is the Italian cornetto (in the Center and South) or brioche (in the North). These variants are often considered to be the same, but that is not completely true: the French version tends to be crispy and contains a lot of butter, whereas an Italian cornetto or brioche is usually softer. Furthermore, the cornetto vuoto (Italian: "empty cornetto") is commonly accompanied by variants with filling, which include crema pasticciera (custard), apricot jam or chocolate cream. They often come covered with powdered sugar or other toppings. Cornetto with cappuccino at the bar is one of the most common breakfasts in Italy.[citation needed]

Poland[edit]
 
St. Martin's croissant from Poznań, Poland
On 11 November, St. Martin's Day is celebrated in the Polish region of Greater Poland, mainly in its capital city Poznań. On this day, the people of Poznań purchase and eat considerable amounts of sweet, crescent-shaped pastries called rogale świętomarcińskie ("St. Martin's croissants"). They are made specially for this occasion from puff pastry with a filling made of ground white poppy seeds, almonds, raisins, and nuts.

Portugal[edit]
The first type of Portuguese croissant is similar to the French, and can be plain or filled with custard, chocolate, fruit jam, or a typical Portuguese cream made of egg yolk and sugar, "doce de ovo". It is customary for these to also have powdered sugar on top. The second version has a similar consistency to brioche and is commonly eaten with ham and cheese. Sometimes this type is also served like toast, with a spread of butter. While the first type of croissant is considered sweet and is eaten during breakfast or tea, the second type is a more filling meal and is usually considered a sandwich and often prepared for picnics or as travel food. Both types share the same name (French/Portuguese: "croissant") but are typically found in different bakeries: the sweet croissant is more commonly found in Portuguese pâtisseries and the brioche croissant is usually found in coffeehouses.[citation needed]

Spain[edit]
Besides of the regular croissant, a variation called Xuixos (pronounced [ʃuʃu])[21] is sold. It is half of a croissant stuffed usually with cream.

Turkey[edit]
A remote similarity of the croissant shape is the Turkish ay çöreği. It is filled with cinnamon, walnut, hazelnut, cacao and raisin.[22] Its rectangular shape variant is known as pastiç or İzmir çöreği.[23] It is generally eaten during breakfast or with tea. 

 

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