[Sca-cooks] bread, again

[Terry Decker]

> Terry Decker wrote:
>> I'd use butter unless they specifically call for oil.    You will 
>> probably either want to melt the butter or use it at room temperature, so 
>> that it will blend into the dough more easily.  When I hear the term 
>> "French bread" rather than a specific name, it usually means an enriched 
>> white bread, usually with milk and butter, a little sugar, and possibly a 
>> couple of eggs. A variant of the Elizabethean "pouf."  Have fun and let 
>> us know how it tastes.
>
>
> Really?  I think crisp, unenriched baguette.
>
> -- 
> Antonia di Benedetto Calvo

"French" bread in most American cookbooks is a bastardization of reality 
derived from the soft bread of the 16th Century referred to as "French 
bread" or "pouf".  France has many wonderful breads of which the baguette is 
one of the more recent additions.  I tend to think of then by name rather 
than "French bread."  A few of the ones I've prepared are documented in the 
Florilegium.  The baguette, I am still trying to master.

Bear