National French Bread Day

also:

National California Strawberry Day

Five Food Finds about French Bread

• French national law dictates that ‘French’ bread should contain only combinations of flour, yeast, salt and water.
• French bread is a simple low-fat white flour bread, which is baked into long slender loaves called baguettes.
• Most baguettes are around 2-3’ in length, and 3-5” in thickness.
• 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.
• Outside France, baguettes are also made with other doughs; for example, the Vietnamese bánh mì uses a high proportion of rice flour, while many North American bakeries make whole wheat, multigrain, and sourdough baguettes alongside French-style loaves.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1925 Teaching the theory of evolution became illegal in Tennessee.

1984 A section of Central Park is renamed ‘Strawberry Fields’ to honor John Lennon.

1994 Due to bad harvests, there is a shortage of Japanese grown rice.  Japan’s Imperial Palace begins serving royal meals to the Emperor & Empress with rice grown in the U.S., China and Thailand.

1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones landed in the Egyptian desert, having completed the 1st ‘Around the World’ hot air balloon flight.  According to the BBC, they carried fresh food, including bread, cheese and pre-cooked steaks to last for 6 or 7 days, after which they made due with dried foods such as cereals and powdered milk.  The flight began in the Swiss Alps, took 19 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes, and covered 29,056 non-stop miles.