Look, the French know how you can make an excellent baguette, proper? There isn’t loads of dispute there. Nobody is repeatedly saying, “Eh, I don’t suppose the French have actually confirmed their baguette-making expertise simply but.”
However maintain on. Can the French make an enormous baguette? An enormously lengthy baguette that would feed a small city?
Sure. It seems they will try this, too.
French bakers in Suresnes, simply west of Paris, made a 461-foot baguette on Sunday. The large loaf efficiently returned the title of world’s longest baguette to France, in keeping with Guinness World Data, because it exceeded a 435-foot baguette made by (gasp) Italians in 2019.
That’s longer than a soccer discipline. Wait. Cease. We’re in France. It’s the size of 9 pétanque courts!
Earlier than you accuse the bakers of constructing an absurdly skinny baguette to recreation the system, let it’s identified that record-setting baguettes should be about two inches thick.
A group of 18 formed the dough, which used 200 kilos of flour, starting at 3 a.m., and at about 5 a.m. they began slowly feeding it into an oven. It emerged little by little on the opposite aspect, totally baked.
It was an enormous second in Suresnes. City leaders despatched forth a blizzard of social media messages earlier than and after the baking.
“Bravo aux boulangers,” the city declared. (“Nicely carried out to the bakers.”)
“Suresnes is proud to have been the scene of this file for the longest baguette on this planet, which promotes a nationwide image of our gastronomy in addition to the artisans who perpetuate its know-how,” Guillaume Boudy, the mayor, informed the city’s web site.
Dominique Anract, president of the Nationwide Confederation of French Bakery and Pastry, kindly gave just a little nod to an occasion coming to the area this summer season that in all probability gained’t get fairly as a lot consideration because the baguette feat:
“On this Olympic 12 months, congratulations to all our artisan bakers,” he mentioned, including: “Our baguette is a necessary a part of the gastronomic heritage.”
As soon as baked, the baguette was handed out to members of the general public, together with homeless individuals. However solely after being unfold with Nutella, after all.
So the baguette was massive. However that didn’t make it a succès d’estime. For that, we’d have to show to the annual Grand Prix de la Baguette.
For the final 30 years on this occasion, baguettes have been rigorously judged on style, texture and quite a few different elements. The judges embody bakers, politicians, strange residents and journalists (sadly, not this one).
This 12 months’s winner, amongst 173 contestants competing in April, was Xavier Netry of Boulangerie Utopie within the eleventh arrondissement of Paris.
Furthermore, it’s the French baguette — not Italian, not American, not Burkinabe, not Monégasque — that in 2022 joined the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Record, together with the likes of Ukrainian borscht, Korean kimchi and Haitian soup joumou.
Even when another upstart nationality makes a 500-foot baguette tomorrow, France will stay numéro un.
