Hi all, What I know is that, French or Artisan baguettes tend to have a thicker crust as compared to the Vietnamese basguette. The Vietnamese bagueettes that I get from the stores in California tend to be lighter, with a thin crust outside. This is maybe due to a number of things. 1. The thin crust is due to the amount of steam it sees during the first 10 minutes of baking. The more steam, the harder the crust. 2. The amount of protein in the four is also important. The Italian and French would probably have more protein in its bread since it has more bite, resistance due to the more developed gulten in the dough. It could also be the amount of % of flour in a recipe. Less flour gives less gluten. 3. Iam also thinking that the dough itself probably went through a few rises, making as light as possible. These are my thoughts, please correct me otherwise. I would love to bake them also at home. One thing about french bread that I learned from relatives when staying in Paris is that, if you freeze the bread as soon as u buy it, then thawing 15 minutes in room temperature lets you have pretty good bread. Anothre thing about the Pate. They tend to use pork liver. To make the pate light, my mom told me that in Saigon, they would finely crush day old bread into the pate. Let me know how it went with ur baking. -Yumi
