Cute Young Curly Brunette Girl Outside In The Nature With A Baguette And Tomatoes

While a regular baguette is made with a direct addition of baker's yeast, it is not unusual for artisan-style loaves to be made with a poolish, "biga" or other bread pre-ferments to increase flavor complexity and other characteristics, as well as the addition of whole wheat flour or other grains such as rye. French bread is required by law to avoid preservatives, and as a result bread goes stale in under 24 hours, thus baking baguettes is a daily occurrence, unlike sourdough bread which is baked generally once or twice a week, due to the natural preservatives in a sourdough starter.
Baguettes are closely connected to France and especially to Paris, though they are made around the world. In France, not all long loaves are baguettes; for example, a short, almost rugby ball shaped loaf is a bâtard (literally, bastard), or a "torpedo loaf" in English (its origin is variously explained, but undocumented), another tubular shaped loaf is known as a flûte (also known in the United States as a parisienne) flûtes closely resemble baguettes and weigh more or less than these, depending on the region, and a thinner loaf is called a ficelle (string). (None of these are officially defined either legally or, for instance, in major dictionaries, any more than the baguette itself.) French breads are also made in forms such as a miche, which is a large pan loaf, and a boule, literally ball in French, a large round loaf. Sandwich-sized loaves are sometimes known as demi-baguettes, tiers, or sometimes "Rudi rolls".
Baguettes, either relatively short single-serving size or cut from a longer loaf, are very often used for sandwiches (usually of the submarine sandwich type, but also panini); Baguettes are often sliced and served with pâté or cheese. As part of the traditional continental breakfast in France, slices of baguette are spread with butter and jam and dunked in bowls of coffee or hot chocolate. In the United States, French Bread loaves are sometimes split in half to make French bread pizza.
Baguettes are generally made as partially free-form loaves, with the loaf formed with a series of folding and rolling motions, raised in cloth-lined baskets or in rows on a flour-impregnated towel, called a couche, and baked either directly on the hearth of a deck oven or in special perforated pans designed to hold the shape of the baguette while allowing heat through the perforations. These pans are never used in artisan-style baking, only in the Americanized version of the traditional baking process, which commonly uses frozen bread dough, sometimes called "thaw and bake", generally a cut-down among artisan-style bakers. Generally American style "French Bread" is much fatter, and also scored incorrectly according to French baking tradition and not baked in deck ovens, but in convection ovens. The resulting loaf is much larger, softer, less chewy, and possessing a much more even crumb structure, in contrast to the traditional baguette which is slender, chewy, possesses an uneven and holey crumb structure, and crispy crust.