"Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone" - Some Pretentious Dude

"Wanna bet?" - Cerulean

I am a bread snob. When I was a kid, I loved going with my mother to the grocery store. I loved riding on the end of the shopping cart still in my school uniform, I loved jumping only-on-the-colored-floor-tiles-and-no-cracked-ones, I loved looking at all the meats and trying to pick out the best vegetables. Most of all, I loved it when a voice would come over the loudspeaker and announce that the bakery would have fresh Baguettes in five minutes...three minutes....fresh baguettes are now available in the bakery.

Most of the people in the store would then rush the cooling rack full of fresh hot baguettes in paper sleeves, which the wise bakers would push just outside the bakery for shoppers to pick exactly the baguette they wanted, giving each a brief squeeze, or finding the one that was still the most hot. Most would disappear in minutes, and the store would start the countdown for the next batch. My mother and I would smile, knowing we got the best one in that round. Then we'd tear the end off and eat it, right there in the store.

Of course, this was in New Orleans, a city that is damn serious about food. Since then, as Fyn can attest, I've been spending time in several cities a) moaning about how I can't get a good baguette anywhere and b) trying to teach Fyn, who until recently didn't have much experience with good bread, how to tell what a good baguette is.

I go mostly by feel, and wouldn't really know what to do if the basket of baguettes were kept behind the counter and I couldn't touch them. A good baguette should have a hard, yet brittle crust on the outside, through which, if squeezed slightly, you can feel the give on the inside. But it shouldn't feel hollow, just study but soft. And of course, it should look like a good one. I've been training up Fyn to be a bread snob using the surprisingly good baguettes at Wegman's*, but I'm pretty bad at articulating how I make the decision of which one is elegible for a quick feel in the first place.

Luckily for me, David Lebovitz has come to the rescue. This is right, and everyone who thinks they don't like bread should read it. If you were raised on wonderbread, you don't know what you're missing, but you might have an idea after reading this post and checking out the pictures so gorgeous you can almost smell them. I found myself nodding along with this post and wishing like mad for a good baguette and some fresh unsalted butter. Some nights when we got home from the grocery store, we'd start in on that and never get around to dinner at all.

*Seriously, ya'll, Wegman's has the best baguettes I've gotten in a commercial grocery store since leaving New Orleans. They just taste right - salty and yeasty and like coming home.

Also, coming soon, another bread post from me as I make a couple loaves of the famous No-Knead Bread, because it comes out great, and hey, every other food blogger does it!