Bread and Baguette

Bread is essential in the French food and gastronomy traditions. The most famous French bread is obviously the 'Baguette', considered to be the obvious and perfect ally of a French cheese like a camembert.

A baguette is a long and crispy loaf of bread. The bread can be up to one meter in length and generally weighs around 250 grams. Other names of the famous baguette in English are 'French bread' or 'French stick'.

The baguette bread in fact resembles its “cousin”, the Vienna bread, being a kind of brioche bread baguette. Many variations of the baguette do exist in France, like the epi baguette, with a shape representing a sheaf of wheat.

The famous Epi Baguette.

Baguettes are a type of bread being closely connected to France and especially to Paris. Loaves of bread in France are not all baguettes as you will see in any French boulangerie shop. A short bread can be a bâtard, a short slim bread is a flûte whilst an even thinner one is a ficelle (a “thread”).

Baguettes are ideal for sandwiches. Eaten with paté or cheese, they are outstandingly tasteful. The continental breakfast thus makes use of slices of baguette that French people like to spread with jam and butter and then drunk in a bowl of coffee or hot chocolate.

A classic Baguette bread.

Other French baguettes variations consist in bread being made with different ingredients like rye, sesame, hemp and poppy seeds. Some more modern ones include dry or candied fruit like raisins, nuts, oranges, pineapples or even figs.