Look, the French know how to make a great baguette, right? There’s not much dispute there. No one regularly says, “Hey, I don’t think the French have really demonstrated their baguette-making skills yet.”
But wait. Can the French make a large baguette? An enormously long loaf of bread that could feed a small town?
Yes. Turns out they can do that too.
French bakers in Suresnes, west of Paris, prepared a 461-foot baguette on Sunday. The massive bar successfully returned the title of the world’s longest baguette to France, according to Guinness World Records, as it surpassed a 435-foot baguette made by (gasp) Italians in 2019.
That’s longer than a football field. Wait. Arrest. We are in France. It is the length of nine petanque courts!
Before you accuse bakers of making an absurdly thin baguette to game the system, let it be known that record-breaking baguettes must be about two inches thick.
A team of 18 people shaped the dough, which used 200 pounds of flour, starting at 3 a.m., and around 5 a.m. they began slowly feeding it into an oven. It slowly came out on the other side, fully cooked.
It was a great moment in Suresnes. City leaders sent a flurry of messages on social media before and after the baking.
“Bravo aux boulangers,” declared the people. (“Congratulations to the bakers”).
“Suresnes is proud to have been the scene of this record for the longest baguette in the world, which values a national symbol of our gastronomy as well as the artisans who perpetuate their know-how,” said Guillaume Boudy, the city’s mayor. website.
Dominique Anract, president of the National Confederation of French Baking and Pastry, gave a small nod to an event that will be held in the region this summer and that will probably not receive as much attention as the baguette feat:
“In this Olympic year, congratulations to all our artisan bakers,” he said, adding: “Our baguette is an essential part of gastronomic heritage.”
Once baked, the baguette was distributed to the public, including the homeless. But only after being smeared with Nutella, of course.
So the baguette was big. But that didn’t make it an estimation success. For that, we would have to resort to the annual Baguette Grand Prix.
For the past 30 years at this event, baguettes have been rigorously judged on taste, texture and many other factors. The judges include bakers, politicians, ordinary citizens and journalists (unfortunately, not this one).
This year’s winner, among 173 contestants who competed in April, was Xavier Netry of Boulangerie Utopie in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.
Furthermore, it is the French baguette (neither Italian, nor American, nor Burkinabé, nor Monegasque) that in 2022 joined the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, along with products such as Ukrainian borscht, Korean kimchi and soup Haitian joumou.
Even if some other upstart nationality makes a 500-foot baguette tomorrow, France will still be number one.