The one thing everyone remembers and loves about Paris is the bread. The iconic baguette offers the slim sophistication of a true Parisienne, and nothing's quite like it.

From Proust's madeleine to mom's meatloaf, food evokes memory in a powerful way. It brings back all the scents, sights and sounds of cherished times past. And who can forget French baguettes, with their crispy, crunchy crust and soft, stretchy insides? Their taste might bring back a leisurely afternoon at a sidewalk café or a tiny bakery filled with temptations of every sort.

Bread labeled "French" is common in U.S. groceries, but it resembles the real thing as much as Two Buck Chuck resembles a good Côtes du Rhône. Artisanal baking is coming of age here however, with professional and amateurs alike striving to bake great bread. Their methods are easy to find on the Internet, reflecting a community of bakers willing to share their experiences and techniques. One of the best baking sites is The Fresh Loaf (www.thefreshloaf.com), where long discussions outline the trials and joys of baking — and the most accomplished bakers help beginners. Learning to make an excellent baguette is now easier than making the trip to France.

An excellent baguette is supremely delicious but starts to go stale as soon as it cools, so many French buy them daily. Parisian bakers compete fiercely for best baguette each year in Paris in a contest that keeps them experimenting with the best way to make the ultimate loaf. Their ingredients are limited by law to flour, water, salt and yeast, and their weight is proscribed as well. Several of the past years' winners involve highly hydrated dough and overnight retardation to produce an interior filled with holes and a deep, complex flavor.

One of the secrets to crisp crust is steam injection, which allows the bread to expand wildly or "spring" in the oven. Commercial bread ovens have built-in steam injectors that give a blast of steam when the bread is loaded in the oven. Amateur bakers, however, are at a disadvantage with their home ovens, and have tried for years to duplicate the steam injector with varying results. Steam trays, spritzer bottles, or ice cubes all work fairly well and allow home bakers to make a crisp, flavorful bread for a fraction of the price they would pay in a bakery.

Because flour is an essential ingredient in bread, there's a considerable interest in the kinds of flour to use in each kind of loaf. There's also a large choice of flour types and brands. King Arthur, Bob's Red Mill, and Trader Joe's and Whole Foods brands all make good all-purpose and bread flour.

While good quality flour is a necessity, good technique is even more important. Technique is learned with time and practice, trial and error; although the recipe below is very detailed and intended to convey all the information you need, practice is a great teacher. Be sure to check out the demonstrations listed from the Internet to see the techniques first- hand.

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Review basic bread vocabulary before beginning recipe. Use weight measures for accuracy if you have a scale; dry flour measurements vary.

BAGUETTE

(Makes three baguettes)

500 grams (2-1/4 cups-4 cups) unbleached bread flour, all-purpose flour, or half all-purpose and half bread flour*

350 grams (a tiny bit less than 1-1/2 cups) room temperature water

10 grams sea salt (2 teaspoons, or 2-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)

1 teaspoon instant yeast

Place flour, salt and yeast in the bowl of the food processor. With motor running, pour in the water. Process just until mixed; the dough will form a ball. (Alternatively, mix by hand or in a standing mixer until dough clings together in a ragged mass.)

Allow the dough to autolyse, covered, in the bowl for 20 minutes.

Process the dough for 25 seconds (or knead in mixer or by hand for 5-10 minutes). The dough should look smooth and silky and you should be able to gently stretch a small piece into a "windowpane" thin enough to see the light through. Use a moistened dough scraper, spatula, or wet hands to remove it from the mixer bowl.

Lightly flour or moisten your hands, but don't flour the counter. Fold the dough neatly once or twice. Put a little oil in the bottom of a large bowl and turn the dough over in it so that it comes out smooth-side up and well oiled. Folding demonstration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0o4asEGW78

Cover tightly and let ferment for an hour at 70-72 degrees. Stretch and fold the dough three times at 20-minute intervals during the hour. Cover tightly after each fold.

Let dough ferment a second time until doubled. This will take from 1 to 2-1/2 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen. The dough is ready when it springs back slowly when poked with a finger. If it feels stiff, let it ferment a little longer.

Remove the dough from the bowl and divide it into three equal parts. Pre-shape the dough into balls and let rest, covered with plastic wrap, for 20 minutes. Pre-shaping demonstration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=orJAjfL81gA&feature=related

While the dough is relaxing, prepare the oven for the bake. Put a cast iron skillet or metal baking dish in the bottom of the oven to use for steam. If you have one, place a baking stone on the second rack from the bottom and preheat the oven to 475 degrees. If you don't have a baking stone, consider buying some unglazed Saltillo tiles for the purpose.

You can also use a baking sheet without preheating it.

After the rest, the gluten should have relaxed enough so that the dough handles without too much resistance. If it's still stiff and resistant, let it rest a little longer. Flatten the balls into 4 x 5 inch rectangles, then fold the far side 2/3 of the way toward you. Fold the bottom up and press it down. (This is like folding a letter.) Tuck and fold the dough away from you using a gentle gripping motion with your hands and fingers, tucking the dough in and stretching the surface at the same time. Actively use your little fingers to tuck the ends in. Seal the seam. Demonstration of hand action: (He skips the first folding step.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=STtFnRbmQ7E&feature=related

Place the formed baguettes to proof on a well-floured couche, in a baguette form, or on a sheet of parchment paper sprinkled with flour, cornmeal or semolina. Cover well with plastic wrap or stick the whole thing in a large plastic bag.

Proof for 45 minutes to an hour at 70-72 degrees. The dough should increase 1-1/2 times. It will feel soft but still spring back gently when poked with a finger.

If you have used a couche for proofing, uncover the loaves and place on a peel or on the back of a sheet pan liberally sprinkled with cornmeal. If you have used parchment paper, you can slide the paper and loaves directly onto the peel or the sheet pan. (Using parchment paper is a good thing for beginning bakers since it requires less dexterity than transferring the loaves.)

Score the loaves about 1/4 inch deep 4-7 times starting from the upper left hand corner, holding a lame, razor blade, or serrated knife at a 30-degree angle. You may need to gently hold the end of the loaf to stabilize it. Each slash starts about 3/4 of the way down on the left of the previous slash. Score only the top of the loaf. Spray the loaves lightly with water. Demonstration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2oatMjKz0Y&feature=related

Carefully pour about a cup of warm water into the steam pan and slide the baguettes off the peel and onto the stone or put the baking sheet or baguettes forms onto the rack. Take care not to burn yourself! Some bakers use large gloves and wear long sleeves to protect their arms from the steam. Reduce the heat to 460 degrees.

After 2 minutes, carefully pour a second cup of water into the steam pan. Continue to bake for 20-22 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. The loaves will sound hollow when you tap the bottoms. Immediately remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Even though the loaves smell great, try to resist slicing the bread until it's cool; they're still finishing the bake and developing flavor, and the texture will be gummy if they are not allowed to finish the process.

*100 percent bread flour will create a chewier loaf, while 100 percent all-purpose flour will make a more tender loaf. Half bread flour and half all-purpose flour mimics most closely the flour used for baguettes in France.

Basic bread vocabulary

* High altitude affects baked goods in many ways. Here in New Mexico we also have to contend with dryness. Dough tends to rise faster at high altitude, so learning to read the dough and know when it’s reached the right stage for baking is an important skill. High-hydration dough works very well here because it doesn’t dry out.

* High-hydration dough is a recipe with a high ratio of water to flour. (Typically 65 percent to 75 percent.) High-hydration dough (also called slack dough) tends to be hard to handle because it’s sticky and floppy. It takes some practice, but is well worth it because of the results it produces: crisp crusts, open crumb, and good oven spring.

* Bread flour is milled from hard winter wheat and is high in protein, or gluten.

* Gluten is the protein in the bread that gives yeasted breads structure. It stretches and forms a skin on the top of the dough that traps the gasses that the yeasts give off as a by-product in the process of digesting the starches in dough. The gasses make the dough rise.

* All-purpose flour is generally lower in gluten than bread flour, but it varies by brand. King Arthur AP flour has enough gluten to make good baguettes. (The flour used in France is lower in gluten than American bread flour, so a combination of AP and bread flour or just AP flour alone is appropriate for baguettes.) The surest way to measure flour is by weight, not in a measuring cup.

* Mixing the dough is the first step in bread making and may be done very well by hand or machine. It is the first step in the development of gluten.

* Autolyse, literally self-destruction, is the first step of fermentation in our recipe, with the exception that a true autolyse is done without the yeast. The flour and water are mixed lightly but thoroughly and allowed to rest. During the rest time, the gluten, which was jumbled, aligns in strands, strengthening the dough.

* Fermentation (bulk or first fermentation) is the first dough rise.

* Retardation, or slowing down the fermentation, is a useful technique for creating both better flavor and timing the dough. In the case of our French bread recipe, the dough is mixed and put through an hour of first fermentation and then refrigerated. It is then baked the next day after 12-24 hours retardation.

* Proofing (or final fermentation) is the last step of fermentation, done after the dough is formed into loaves. It is also called the final rise.

* Couche is heavily floured linen or canvas cloth that nestles the bread, supporting it while it rises. It is especially useful for baguette baking.

* Scoring are the cuts made in the bread to facilitate the bread’s rise in the oven.

* Lame is a scoring instrument — a razor on a stick. A sharp serrated knife works well, too.

* Oven spring is the amount the dough rises in the oven. A hot oven and a high hydration dough combined with a baking stone = the best oven spring.

* Crumb is the texture inside the bread. A good French bread will have a creamy mouth feel and an open texture. A crumb with an open, gelatinized texture will have great flavor.