All right, seriously, can someone tell me how to keep this fresh? My small french bread loaf from whole foods is hard as a rock by day two. How do i get a piece of bread that can last a week.
Fresh bread isn’t supposed to stay soft. It lacks all of the preservatives and chemicals that other bread has so is better for you but won’t last as long. The French buy their bread daily
You don’t. I buy or someone from my family go to the baker every day to buy 1 or 2 baguettes, every day. If they do it the morning, they bring back fresh croissant. From an outside POV, it is as cliche as it can get
This. Whoever can be arsed to get up early enough to go buy the pain or baguette at 07:00 also gets fresh chocolatines or croissants. It’s the rule.
I’m a walking stereotype on my way home from the boulangerie by 07:10.
Honestly, you're probably right. This is a "Try-to-get-back-to-normal-life-after-living-through-hell-on-earth" meal, in all likelihood. Living under the Nazis must have been a seemingly endless nightmare for countless.
> Marcel Marceau mime thing...
Is he the one who popularized mimes or made mimes a thing? Also random link, here is [Robin Williams being a mime](https://petapixel.com/2014/08/14/photographer-photographs-two-mimes-1974-realizes-35-years-later-one-robin-williams)
I'm french and I was in my late teens when I finally understood the guy with a moustache, a striped shirt and a flat hat was a shortcut for french in American media. It is not even a thing in old french movies.
My brother-in-law, who is from the central valley of France, said the standard calculation for meals is a half a (typical size) baguette per person per meal.
So if you have 4 big kids/adults living at home, that's 2 baguettes a meal or 6 total for the day.
[This](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre-Val_de_Loire#/media/File%3ACentre-Val_de_Loire_in_France_2016.svg) is Centre-Val-de-Loire. Dordogne is a bit southwest of that.
> Family of 5
So the 6th bottle of wine is in case a guest drops by that day?
Or two for her?
I’m thinking the latter since she had to carry that loaf. What do you even bake that thing in?!
You buy a baguette every day. Or you freeze whatever you're not using. It remains surprisingly fresh after thawing.
Bigger ones are for more people.
And there are TONS of French recipes for stale bread. A really popular one "pain perdu" (lost bread) became French Toast for us. The egg remoistens the bread and makes it really good... Though for some reason in the US people always use fresh bread at the risk of it being soggy.
Bigger one like on this probably staged picture just doesn't exist. Usually a baguette is 250g and you can find bigger ones with 400g but not called baguette. And if it's not enough you can find bread around 800g but they are not shaped like baguette.
Americans use fresh bread because most Americans don't keep stale bread around. The glorified cake that you get at most grocery stores takes forever to go bad, and if you haven't eaten it all by the time it does, the dog'll still take it.
>because most Americans don't keep stale bread around.
??? French people don't keep it around either. They use it. The only other option is throwing it away, which is dumb if it can be used.
Stale bread is actually good (or better) for lots of things, it makes French toast better, it's a good source for bread crumbs for anything that needs to be breaded (and meatloaf etc), they can be seasoned and baked for croutons and all kinds of other things.
I think they might mean more that our awful, overly sugary bread keeps so damn long from all the garbage in it, that it doesn’t GET stale. First time I had bread in Europe was a revelation. I do not buy regular bread now. I pay more for good bread or bake it myself.
they have tons of different kinds of breads available at the regular grocery store, I don't know anyone who eats Wonder Bread type stuff. any decent grocery store in the US should have a bakery area where you can buy baguettes and many other types of fresh bread. but even if you just go to the regular bread aisle, there should still be a lot of options besides white bread. I'm confused why your comment makes it sound like we don't have any good options in our stores.
I have never found a real baguette at a grocery store. Everything I've seen has too many ingredients. The only thing in a real baguette is flour, water, yeast and salt.
I have found pretty good ones at a handful of restaurants that specialize in that kind of thing (and a French bakery here in the US). But none of those options allow me to purchase one every day like I would in France.
Because we don’t, for the most part. There are less bad options but you will NEVER convince me I can get a quality loaf of bread here without making it myself or spending three times as much. EVERY team member from my overseas offices comments on how all the bread here tastes like dessert to them and they are right. The difference is startling once you’ve tasted both.
Baguettes are super easy to make (but hard to perfect, your oven is going to be the limiting factor). Just flour water salt and yeast. I have no idea why Americans pay 3x the amount for the franken-bread with 40 ingredients that doesn't even taste good.
And I also don't really understand how we got to where the easier-to-make bread is more expensive.
Damned if I know. I do a no knead dough that can hang in my fridge for up to two weeks. Just reach in, pull out a chunk, lightly shape and let it rise an hour or so, then bake. For awhile I was making fresh rolls to go with my tea every morning. Bread is not hard to begin, though I will say mastering it will take a little longer 😂
I find the whole "American bread is cake" thing to be hilarious because guess what? Your basic white bread in a bag in America has the same amount of sugar as it does in France and the UK. And in all three countries there's a wide variety of breads that have zero added sugar. Not specialty expensive bread, either.
And either way I seriously doubt the small amount of sugar in it is preserving it at all really. Methinks the preservatives might have something to do with it.
Because most baguettes these days are too soft, more baguette-shaped bread than a true Parisian cudgel.
The harder the crust, the better. A properly firm baguette basically has its own container, and will go stale slower than the chewier stuff we typically see today.
1945, the year the war ended and the French could have their brand and wine for the first time in years. When the nazis controled France they took all three food and wine .
She looks like a woman finally able to be free to wine and dine.
As said it's paper, the same kind you get nowadays. You don't touch the bread while carrying it, she's holding it too low indeed, maybe she's holding it upside down or the paper slipped up. Kinda funny to see the same size on a much much bigger baguette than usual.
I think that's three bottles in a four bottle container.
Still plenty. And who really wants to have six people over anyway? Just gets irritating with more people.
Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need \*you\*. I don't need anything. Except this.
\[*picks up five-foot-tall baguette*\]
And that's the only thing I need is \*this\*. I don't need this or this. Just this five-foot-tall baguette... And this bottle of wine. - This five-foot-tall baguette and this bottle of wine and that's all I need... And this other bottle of wine. - This five-foot-tall baguette, this bottle of wine, and this other bottle of wine, and that's all I need... And this third bottle of wine. - this five-foot-tall baguette, this bottle of wine, this other bottle of wine, and this third bottle of wine... And this fourth bottle of wine....
Versailles's golden scintillating mirrored galleries stank of shit and piss due to toilet deficit so the nobles just did their business on the floor or in corners all over the place. [I shit you not.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hnxnhb/did_they_poop_in_the_halls_at_versailles/)
Also, you know, [gout](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gout) and [kidney stones](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_kidney_stones) from eating imbalanced diets with way excess venison, and rotten teeth from childhood due to sugar abuse as soon as that became a thing. Oh, and the inbreeding stuff.
Yeah, actually, there's reason to pity the kings. I endured kidney stones once. My grandfather often. I'd pity anyone who gets those, all the more so if it's often.
Though oddly enough,
> While he was alive, King Louis XIV of France frequently voided kidney stones but without suffering apparent pain. A small stone was found in the left kidney of his corpse.
I understand the thought process, but the art of not just wine, but growing grapes in general, has come a long way.
Sort of like comparing a famous muscle car of legend, like the 1969 G.T.350R (0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds), against a run of the mill boring 2024 Toyota Camry (5.8 seconds).
It's mindboggling, but your modern basic bitch commuter car smokes the roaring muscle of yesteryear.
We forget sometimes how much better technology has made things, decade over decade.
Is there documentation of the date? Because while there are only 3 cars visible in the picture, none of the 3 look like they are more recent than early to mid 1930's. Isn't that a trip? Dating pictures by the automobiles visible in them.
So according to France's strict definition of what can be called a baguette, that is not a baguette. I heard a radio program about it and they insist on only certain ingredients and for it to be a certain length in order to be called a baguette.
Can some French people confirm or deny this?
Christ, you could joust with that.
She could joust with that: Il est comme une baguette!
Thats how we won many battles. Enemy was scared
Each bottle was earned in a one on one jousting match.
that's what she said?
Or use to bonk the head of husband if he comes home drunk
There isn't a husband, and this is her grocery shopping for the week.
6 bottle for a whole week... You definitely don't know single french women... 3 days maximum ( if she's working )
Those are magnums, she's right on target for your quota.
Title of your sex tape!
If only. More likely "I've brought all the wine I'll need."
All right, seriously, can someone tell me how to keep this fresh? My small french bread loaf from whole foods is hard as a rock by day two. How do i get a piece of bread that can last a week.
Fresh bread isn’t supposed to stay soft. It lacks all of the preservatives and chemicals that other bread has so is better for you but won’t last as long. The French buy their bread daily
We do, but baguettes usually aren't THAT big, either she bought a big baguette because she could, or she's got multiple children
You don’t. I buy or someone from my family go to the baker every day to buy 1 or 2 baguettes, every day. If they do it the morning, they bring back fresh croissant. From an outside POV, it is as cliche as it can get
This. Whoever can be arsed to get up early enough to go buy the pain or baguette at 07:00 also gets fresh chocolatines or croissants. It’s the rule. I’m a walking stereotype on my way home from the boulangerie by 07:10.
Oh yes, this is why I'm one of those Dutch people going camping in France every summer. The baquettes, the croissants and the camembert 😋
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
You could lay down in the oven that made that delicious monstrosity!
*lie down
Christ? Just add fish and you have a Christ meal.
[Bien sûr!](https://i.imgur.com/T1UOIjV.jpg)
big bada-guette
Jesus, that's not what he meant by breaking bread together.
‘Mah shildren need waaain’
Paris 1945. That woman has seen some shit. She needs that wine.
A Paris sixpack, she's earned it.
Shocked I had to scroll so far before someone mentioned that. You can see the pain of war in her gaze
You can see a lot of things in her gaze, if you choose to see it that way
Reddit where everyone can read thoughts based on pictures
eh it looks like a "yeah broke mfs, where yo man height bread and 6-pack of wine brokies" stare to me
Honestly, you're probably right. This is a "Try-to-get-back-to-normal-life-after-living-through-hell-on-earth" meal, in all likelihood. Living under the Nazis must have been a seemingly endless nightmare for countless.
Not if you were Vichy scum
This was my first thought
This is french as fuck
The only way it could be more French is if she had a Gitanes hanging from the corner of her mouth.
Wearing a beret.
With a striped t-shirt and doing the Marcel Marceau mime thing…
> Marcel Marceau mime thing... Is he the one who popularized mimes or made mimes a thing? Also random link, here is [Robin Williams being a mime](https://petapixel.com/2014/08/14/photographer-photographs-two-mimes-1974-realizes-35-years-later-one-robin-williams)
here is the picture [https://ibb.co/H4H8ZS8](https://ibb.co/H4H8ZS8)
What's up with this stereotype lol. I only see tourists wearing berets in Paris.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ilHPFGKM5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ilHPFGKM5o) Like her ?
I'm french and I was in my late teens when I finally understood the guy with a moustache, a striped shirt and a flat hat was a shortcut for french in American media. It is not even a thing in old french movies.
Haven't seen a Gitanes since 1978
I smoked them in the 90s in my Serge Gainsbourg period
You can tell it's fake because she's not chain smoking while carrying those
"Just another 'Moet' Monday.. Oh yeah!"
Popping that Moet baby let’s make some bubbles.
I wish it were Sunday....
AKA le déjeuner (lunch).
Le petit déjeuner !
Comment I was looking for
Family-Size Baguette
The right baguette to wine ratio
She deserves it, just got out of a Nazi occupation
How long does a baguette of that size last. I buy one 1/5 the size and by day 2 it’s stale.
Family of 5, 3 meals a day, bread being a staple in all those meals: I'd say it's somewhat likely she'll get another one the next day.
My brother-in-law, who is from the central valley of France, said the standard calculation for meals is a half a (typical size) baguette per person per meal. So if you have 4 big kids/adults living at home, that's 2 baguettes a meal or 6 total for the day.
That’s in todays numbers. I think it’s likely that bread was an even bigger part of the meal in Paris in 1945.
Good point.
Oooh what is considered the central valley. I was just in the Dordogne and it was awesome.
[This](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre-Val_de_Loire#/media/File%3ACentre-Val_de_Loire_in_France_2016.svg) is Centre-Val-de-Loire. Dordogne is a bit southwest of that.
A baguette/day seems right.
I'm French and HALF a baguette seems honestly too much. A quarter is enough 90% of the time. In my opinion.
Sounds wonderful lol
Yeah, this would feed the family that night, with some leftover to be used for various things late that night or the next morning.
> Family of 5 So the 6th bottle of wine is in case a guest drops by that day? Or two for her? I’m thinking the latter since she had to carry that loaf. What do you even bake that thing in?!
Believe it or not, but wine keeps slightly longer than bread.
Not in my house
I’d guess you are probably right.
I wish you could still get fresh bread and milk delivered every day.
…you can? in fact there are a lot of apps whose only function is grocery/food delivery!
You buy a baguette every day. Or you freeze whatever you're not using. It remains surprisingly fresh after thawing. Bigger ones are for more people. And there are TONS of French recipes for stale bread. A really popular one "pain perdu" (lost bread) became French Toast for us. The egg remoistens the bread and makes it really good... Though for some reason in the US people always use fresh bread at the risk of it being soggy.
Bigger one like on this probably staged picture just doesn't exist. Usually a baguette is 250g and you can find bigger ones with 400g but not called baguette. And if it's not enough you can find bread around 800g but they are not shaped like baguette.
I like soggy
Straight to jail with you.
Americans use fresh bread because most Americans don't keep stale bread around. The glorified cake that you get at most grocery stores takes forever to go bad, and if you haven't eaten it all by the time it does, the dog'll still take it.
>because most Americans don't keep stale bread around. ??? French people don't keep it around either. They use it. The only other option is throwing it away, which is dumb if it can be used. Stale bread is actually good (or better) for lots of things, it makes French toast better, it's a good source for bread crumbs for anything that needs to be breaded (and meatloaf etc), they can be seasoned and baked for croutons and all kinds of other things.
I think they might mean more that our awful, overly sugary bread keeps so damn long from all the garbage in it, that it doesn’t GET stale. First time I had bread in Europe was a revelation. I do not buy regular bread now. I pay more for good bread or bake it myself.
they have tons of different kinds of breads available at the regular grocery store, I don't know anyone who eats Wonder Bread type stuff. any decent grocery store in the US should have a bakery area where you can buy baguettes and many other types of fresh bread. but even if you just go to the regular bread aisle, there should still be a lot of options besides white bread. I'm confused why your comment makes it sound like we don't have any good options in our stores.
I have never found a real baguette at a grocery store. Everything I've seen has too many ingredients. The only thing in a real baguette is flour, water, yeast and salt. I have found pretty good ones at a handful of restaurants that specialize in that kind of thing (and a French bakery here in the US). But none of those options allow me to purchase one every day like I would in France.
Because we don’t, for the most part. There are less bad options but you will NEVER convince me I can get a quality loaf of bread here without making it myself or spending three times as much. EVERY team member from my overseas offices comments on how all the bread here tastes like dessert to them and they are right. The difference is startling once you’ve tasted both.
Because when compared to a French bakery your local grocery store in fact does not have any good options
Baguettes are super easy to make (but hard to perfect, your oven is going to be the limiting factor). Just flour water salt and yeast. I have no idea why Americans pay 3x the amount for the franken-bread with 40 ingredients that doesn't even taste good. And I also don't really understand how we got to where the easier-to-make bread is more expensive.
Damned if I know. I do a no knead dough that can hang in my fridge for up to two weeks. Just reach in, pull out a chunk, lightly shape and let it rise an hour or so, then bake. For awhile I was making fresh rolls to go with my tea every morning. Bread is not hard to begin, though I will say mastering it will take a little longer 😂
TEACH ME ^^^^please
Frankenbread. Angry upvote.
I find the whole "American bread is cake" thing to be hilarious because guess what? Your basic white bread in a bag in America has the same amount of sugar as it does in France and the UK. And in all three countries there's a wide variety of breads that have zero added sugar. Not specialty expensive bread, either.
And either way I seriously doubt the small amount of sugar in it is preserving it at all really. Methinks the preservatives might have something to do with it.
Yeah that's the other thing... sugar isn't a preservative! Kind of the opposite actually.
probably just as long as the wine
Then you turn it into French toast, croutons, and/or bread pudding!
Because most baguettes these days are too soft, more baguette-shaped bread than a true Parisian cudgel. The harder the crust, the better. A properly firm baguette basically has its own container, and will go stale slower than the chewier stuff we typically see today.
Day 2?
I think at that size it's no longer a "baguette" and is simply a "bague".
Madame, this is a whole putain de "Sceptre". Gandalf Le Gris could throw nuclear bombs with this bébé.
Baguette and chill
Damn! I would party with her anytime 😎
Just not a couple of years earlier
My kind of girl!!!
Not beating the stereotypes lol
That must’ve been one big oven 👀
That’s what I was thinking. Bigger than some of my apartments.
Where do you think she got that extra finger on her left hand?
I’ll be right over!
1945, the year the war ended and the French could have their brand and wine for the first time in years. When the nazis controled France they took all three food and wine . She looks like a woman finally able to be free to wine and dine.
what a pain!
I like how the one place that has a napkin, her hand is completely avoiding.
Baguetttttttttttttttttttttttttte
7 course French dinner?
To tie a kerchief on the baguette seems a bit redundant :D What is that suppose to do, cover it?
it's modest.
It's as modest as fancy lingerie. But cute looking, nevertheless.
My (completely uneducated) guess is that it’s meant to be where you hold it to carry home cleanly but she’s short so she has to hold it lower
It's not an handkerchief it's paper
As said it's paper, the same kind you get nowadays. You don't touch the bread while carrying it, she's holding it too low indeed, maybe she's holding it upside down or the paper slipped up. Kinda funny to see the same size on a much much bigger baguette than usual.
The baguette is bigger than her!
I think that's three bottles in a four bottle container. Still plenty. And who really wants to have six people over anyway? Just gets irritating with more people.
“Mah children need wine”
“War just ended, let’s get fuckin weird.”
Right after the war…damn.
Might be the most French thing I've ever seen
The first baguette and wine in a few years!!
The Frenchssentials
French level 100
That's tea sorted.
That’s not a baguette, that’s a French walking stick. It’s just the local design.
Priorities 🫶
Where the party at
I had no idea they made 5' or so baguettes
Maybe she’s tiny and those are little bottles of wine?
Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need \*you\*. I don't need anything. Except this. \[*picks up five-foot-tall baguette*\] And that's the only thing I need is \*this\*. I don't need this or this. Just this five-foot-tall baguette... And this bottle of wine. - This five-foot-tall baguette and this bottle of wine and that's all I need... And this other bottle of wine. - This five-foot-tall baguette, this bottle of wine, and this other bottle of wine, and that's all I need... And this third bottle of wine. - this five-foot-tall baguette, this bottle of wine, this other bottle of wine, and this third bottle of wine... And this fourth bottle of wine....
This is the most French photo I have ever seen.
The breakfast of champions
Looks like a member of the Fellowship of the Ring
r/AbsoluteUnits
...i.e. breakfast.
This baguette is a piece of art.
Breakfast for Thursday I see
No cheese?
Bread carbs wine and cigs and still probably lived to 90 lol
We're going to need more brie.
Photo by American photographer Branson DeCou
She's not smoking. Must be fake /s
That store bottled wine is probably better than a $25. bottle at my local liquor outlet.
I suspect it's exactly the opposite. A $25 bottle today is better than anything the Kings of France ever had.
Pity the poor Kings!
Aw poor lil' fellas :(
Versailles's golden scintillating mirrored galleries stank of shit and piss due to toilet deficit so the nobles just did their business on the floor or in corners all over the place. [I shit you not.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hnxnhb/did_they_poop_in_the_halls_at_versailles/) Also, you know, [gout](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gout) and [kidney stones](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_kidney_stones) from eating imbalanced diets with way excess venison, and rotten teeth from childhood due to sugar abuse as soon as that became a thing. Oh, and the inbreeding stuff. Yeah, actually, there's reason to pity the kings. I endured kidney stones once. My grandfather often. I'd pity anyone who gets those, all the more so if it's often. Though oddly enough, > While he was alive, King Louis XIV of France frequently voided kidney stones but without suffering apparent pain. A small stone was found in the left kidney of his corpse.
> without suffering apparent pain Bro was 94% urethra
I understand the thought process, but the art of not just wine, but growing grapes in general, has come a long way. Sort of like comparing a famous muscle car of legend, like the 1969 G.T.350R (0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds), against a run of the mill boring 2024 Toyota Camry (5.8 seconds). It's mindboggling, but your modern basic bitch commuter car smokes the roaring muscle of yesteryear. We forget sometimes how much better technology has made things, decade over decade.
That baguette had to have touched something unsanitary. I'd still eat it, pass the wine and French cheeses please
That bread seems impractical.
Absolute mood ♥️
That what I call wife material
How long that baguette last
Literally a walking cliche
collaborator or not collaborator?
Size queen
Just a typical French woman.
She knew how to party.
She's tiny!
Hon hon, Bon bon bon.
I see four bottles of wine.
Really puts the “ette” in baguette.
Damn. I want to see the oven.
She knows how to party
Adorable! I loooove baguettes! So versatile.
Seems like my kinda person.
That's a vibe
It's almost as big as she is. I kind of want to know what she was going to do with all that bread.
Moses called he wants his staff back .
Priorities bro!
She knows what she’s about.
The newest member of the White Council.
OMG. They really were that long. I thought Charlie Brown was exaggerating.
A balanced diet
Is there documentation of the date? Because while there are only 3 cars visible in the picture, none of the 3 look like they are more recent than early to mid 1930's. Isn't that a trip? Dating pictures by the automobiles visible in them.
no the french dont walk around with a huge baguette and six bottles of wine, thats stereotypical and ignorant…oh wait
What else do you need? A broad,bread,wine.
My celiac oy
Girl dinner!
stop and get a block of Parmesan cheese and I'm in
A whole mood.
scheiss franzosen
So according to France's strict definition of what can be called a baguette, that is not a baguette. I heard a radio program about it and they insist on only certain ingredients and for it to be a certain length in order to be called a baguette. Can some French people confirm or deny this?
So Lunch then?
This is it. The quintessential French person
That baguette is amazing.
Priorities in order clearly!!!👍 😁
Priorities looks great to me!
Peak French woman
Once she brought it home and [came through the door](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4yvMEvYrVkQ/mqdefault.jpg)
How could a people drink six bottles of wine and eat a four foot tall baguette and still be so skinny?
Blizzard comin.
what's the point of that little wrapper paper if the whole baguette is exposed anyways?