But to have bread is more than that: it means to have human contact. The word companion came from the combination of Latin prefix com-, meaning “with,” and panis, “bread.” Historically speaking, to have company is to have someone to share our food with.

Food is never just about feeding ourselves. Cooking is one of the most important expressions of culture and cultural identity.  I have yet to meet a homesick person who would not mention the irreplaceable food from home among the first things they miss, and would not share their national cuisine with international friends with great pride. Cooking sustains a sense of cultural identity: look at the classics of American gangster sagas for examples. The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Sopranos for cooking scenes which boil over with a strong sense and knowledge of being Italian, of being a minority in an Anglo-Saxon country. Sharing a family meal can be subtle game of manipulation and status as sensitively depicted in Zhang Yimou’s film Raise the Red Lantern; or of an medium of communication when words are not sufficient any more, shown in the sensuous sequences of Like Water for Chocolate.

But besides being so spiced with meaning, food is also a principal source of pleasure. It’s not just bread we want from life, we want baguette if possible. And bagel, challah, pumpernickel; whole wheat, stone ground, or fluffy white; Russian black, johnnycake, naan, and sourdough. In this blog I will give ideas and recipes on how to bake, cook, roast, fry or otherwise prepare our daily nourishment for the table to be shared with our companions in life, in the delicious varieties the cuisines of the world offer – hence the “baguette” in the title. Along with the recipes I will muse on ideas on what they mean, how we arrived to this kind of eating, and what we discover of ourselves through what we eat and how we eat it.

To kick off this blog and this post, let’s see how to make, (and eat) le baguette.

I based this recipe on Bernard Clayton’s Pain Ordinaire Careme from his New Complete Book of Breads, with some variation. It will rise best if made some high-gluten flour such as bread flour. The process is not difficult or complicated, the only key to the fluffy, high-risen loaf or stick is patience, perseverance in kneading, patience in waiting for the dough to rise and sufficiently warm temperature for the yeast to do its job.

Get:

5 cups of flour (plus more for kneading)

2 packages of dry yeast

2.5 cups of hot water

2 teaspoons of salt

You can get the rest of the recipe here. The end result will look like this:

The most widely loved way of eating it is with butter, and a glass of wine, or milk. I learned an other tasty – and perhaps healthier – way from a Catalonian friend while I was spending my vacation in Barcelona a few years ago. (Thanks, Marcal!) Cut open a large ripe tomato and rub the inside of the bagette with juicy vegetable. Drip some olive oil on it and ready!

Get:

5 cups of flour (plus more for kneading)

2 packages of dry yeast

2.5 cups of hot water

2 teaspoons of salt

MIXING THE DOUGH. Start with half of the flour, salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl, and add the hot water. Beat it with a mixer into a thin batter, like pancake batter until it smooth and bubbly. This will aerate the dough and speed up the rising.

Beat half the flour into a thin batter

Until smooth and bubbly

Gently stir in the rest of the flour, one half cup at a time, until the dough holds together into a lumpy ball but is still limp if lifted. If it’s overloaded with flour, it will become a hard ball and not rise properly.

KNEADING. Turn the rough dough over to a floured counter surface or a pastry cloth. Start kneading in a push-fold-turn motion. Sprinkle more flour if the dough is sticky – it may or may not take up as much an extra cup. Knead vigorously for 6-10 minutes. Don’t be gentle: the dough is your punching ball, and can take over all the frustrations of the workweek from you!

push...

and fold

FIRST RISING. When the ball is smooth, velvety, and elastic, put it back into the bowl, pour some olive oil or cooking oil over it and roll it over a few times so that the oil thinly covers the ball of dough. Set it aside to a warm place to rise for at least an hour.

Check for elasticity by pushing one finger into the ball

if it bounces back with only a small impression left by the finger, the kneading's done.

Before the first rising

... and after

SECOND RISING. When the dough has become triple its size, punch it down, knead it for a minute or two, and let it rise again.

After the second rising

SHAPING. Punch down the fluffy dough and turn it over from the bowl to the work surface. Cut it in as many pieces as many sticks you’d like. I made four foot-long baguettes of it. Stretch the dough balls into sticks and gently lift them over to the oiled and floured baking sheet.

Punch down the fluffy dough and divide into loaves

Shape the bread sticks

Let them rise for the third time until they double in size. Slash the top of the sticks diagonally with a sharp knife. Bake them in very hot oven (450 F) and put an empty pan at the bottom of the over filled with hot water to make the oven’s air moist for baking.

and crack open!

The most widely loved way of eating it is with butter, and a glass of wine, or milk. I learned an other tasty – and perhaps healthier – way from a Catalonian friend while I was spending my vacation in Barcelona a few years ago. (Thanks, Marcal!) Cut open a large ripe tomato and rub the inside of the bagette with juicy vegetable. Drip some olive oil on it and ready!