Baguette

A 20th-century bread

Despite its association with timeless French culture, the modern baguette is less than a century old. The long-thin shape emerged in 1920s Paris when a French law prohibited bakers from working before 4 AM — bakeries needed bread shapes that could go from mixing to oven faster than the traditional round boule. The thin baguette form proves and bakes quickly, and it took over.

Just four ingredients

A traditional baguette contains only flour, water, yeast, and salt. The 1993 Décret Pain (Bread Decree) of France formalized the rule for “pain de tradition” — bread that can be sold as traditional French baguette must contain only those four ingredients, with no additives, no preservatives, no sweeteners, and no freezing of the dough.

How it’s scored and baked

Baguettes are slashed across the top with a razor — these scores aren’t decorative; they control how the bread expands. Baking happens in a steam-injected oven at high heat (240-260 °C). The steam delays crust formation, letting the bread spring open along the scores; once steam clears, the crust crisps.

Eaten the day it’s baked

A real baguette is meant to be eaten within a few hours of baking. Its high crust-to-crumb ratio means it stales quickly — by the next morning, the texture has gone from crisp-shattering to leathery-tough. This is why French households shop for fresh bread daily.

In Vietnam

Banh mi sandwiches inherited their bread directly from French colonial baguettes — but Vietnamese bakers adapted the recipe to use rice flour alongside wheat, producing a lighter, airier loaf better suited to humid weather and the sandwich format. It’s now a distinct bread tradition with banh mi as its showcase.