Brood and Pain

Kinda sounds like something bad, but it's actually something veeeery good. Brood is "bread" in Dutch and pain is "bread" in French.

Jim loves bread.

That deserved a paragraph all to itself.

He's baked his fair share of bread and most of the time it's good. And I'm an expert on bread baking :) Ha.

Mastering the art for at least 20 years

Seriously, there is certainly an art to baking not only edible bread, but melt-in-your-mouth bread.

We're blessed with bakeries all over Hasselt and the Delhaize (supermarket) across the street bakes a couple dozen different kinds of bread, all day long, every day. There's hot bread throughout the day, but we've found if we go about 6:00 pm, there's always hot baguettes. You can even pre-order hot bread of any kind - any time!

So anyway, Jim decided to bake some authentic French bread. The French are serious about what is and is not authentic French bread. A baguette is a long thin loaf of French bread made with basic dough. Here's the best part - the dough (not the shape) is defined by French law. A standard baguette has a diameter of 2-2.5 in. and is about 24 in. long.

By law, it must contain only water, yeast, flour, and salt. French bread is also required by law to avoid preservatives, and as a result, bread goes stale in under 24 hours, thus baking baguettes is a daily occurrence. Actually, we've found that to be the case with all bread baked here in Belgium too. It is delicious and fresh the day you buy it, but the next morning it is time for a new loaf.

The birds are well fed here.

Always the law abider

In addition to the ingredients law, there's also a new law in place regarding the bakery (boulangerie in French) itself. In order to be called a boulangerie, the bakery must not only bake their own bread, they must also make the dough on site. Most bakeries don't do that. It's delivered and then baked.

The 21 hour rising process

Pain payoff :)