by Claire Lassam | Nearly everybody who has ever met me knows that I wish I was French. Despite being hopeless at the language and not having any family ties (and definitely not having a good chance at a visa, much less a job), I desperately wish I was. Recently, a friend of mine sat me down, looked me in the eye, and told me that no matter how much I pranced around, wear berets, and listened to Edith Piaf, I am not Amelia and I have to get over it. And while a girl can dream, I had to admit that he might be right.

As I sat there, listening to Carla Bruni, eating a baguette and debating my existence on this continent, I realized thatwith some good, salty butter, I was eating quite a good baguette. Not a great Parisian baguette, mind, but one with a little crunch, a little chew and a little flavour. I decided that if I could find a great Parisian baguette and some proper pork rilettes, I could probably be happy here and put the dream behind me.

So what makes a great Parisian baguette? It starts with a very simple dough of only four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. These are kneaded together, rested, risen, punched, shaped, scored and baked. When done correctly, it gets a thick, crisp crust that gives way to a chewy – but not so chewy that it’s hard to get through – interior. Think just enough crunch to give it some substance, to hold up to the butter and the cheese and/or salami that you’re putting on top.

And what makes a bad baguette? Well, a huge number of things really, but mostly people don’t let the dough sit for long enough. Bread dough develops slowly; the yeast is growing and fermenting. Bread, like fermented grape juice, tastes better when it’s given some time to develop. The other, most common error in my opinion is that we just don’t bake baguettes enough. If you walk into a proper bakery in Paris they will have the most beautiful, deep auburn loaves, but out on the tourist-lined streets the bread looks and tastes all doughy because it’s undercooked. I’ve never seen a proper Frenchman buy a loaf like that.

The local baguette that started me on this mission was from Swiss Bakery on 3rd Avenue. It was good to be sure, with a soft chewiness and the right depth of flavour, but it just didn’t have the proper crunch to its exterior. I want a few breadcrumbs to come off as I eat it, and that wasn’t happening. So I googled, yelped, asked around, eventually amassing a list of places that were supposed to be the best around.

I started out with a promising loaf from the aptly named Baguette et Co. on West Broadway. They serve 3 different types of baguette: classic, heritage, and sourdough (yes, I know classic and heritage sound like the same thing, but the heritage is aged a little longer). Nibbling at the heritage as we drove home, I found that it had a good crunch on the outside and a nice texture on the inside, but by the time we made it to our door, the crust had softened dramatically, which is not supposed to happen. Nonetheless, it was still a good piece of bread and I was feeling optimistic about the mission overall.

That optimism was dashed, however, when on Granville Island, I test drove “Vancouver’s First Authentic French Bakery”, La Baguette and L’Echalote. Here, the crust was thin, the dough was flavourless, and the texture was of dry Wonderbread. The bag also listed monoglycerides, ascorbic acid, and enzymes, making it not even a baguette by French law. Not impressed.

Next up was Fauboug, which was beautiful but softly crusted again. This was also my complaint with the baguette from La Marche St George (although it was the cutest place I went by far), and Traffiq‘s offering was bereft of flavour. I was starting to feel a little desperate. I could have stomped my foot on the ground, cursed in French and threw up my hands in despair (I’m not willing to confirm or deny that I did).

What I will confirm is that I eventually found a baguette that was nearly perfect – not totally spot on – at Mix The Bakery on West 10th. It had a rich flavour, owing to a small amount of malt added to the dough. The crust was thick and it crumbled slightly on the tooth. The crust surrounded a deeply bubbled interior, the kind that’s a little hard to spread with butter because there are so many holes. I loved this nevertheless, largely because it’s socially acceptable to fill the holes with butter and pretend that there’s bread where there just isn’t any.

Butter aside, it was a proper baguette. Would I have liked the crust to be a little crisper? Perhaps. Could the inside have been a little more moist? Yes, it could have been. It wasn’t flawless, but it was damn close. I readily admit to being more than a little nit-picky. I’d like to call it my French disposition but…well, I’m not really French.

*Note – the best butter that I’ve found in this city is from Avalon, and if you sprinkle some Maldon salt on top you will be extremely happy. Another great French baguette topper is pork rillette. The best is at Moccia Urbani, but the stuff at Big Lou’s on the DTES is darn close.

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Claire Lassam is a baker, blogger, and freelance writer based in East Van. She has been cooking and baking her way through the city for nearly five years, working in restaurants ranging from Cioppino’s to Meat & Bread. She currently toils at the soon-to-open Cadeaux Bakery in Railtown and runs the baking blog  Just Something Pretty.

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