If French bread is so good why don't we see more of it in the U.S.?  I've read so many articles praising the quality of French bread and even more from frustrated bakers who can't come close to duplicating it.  It wouldn't take much to obtain some French wheat grain, bring it to North America and grow it.  I think that I've found one answer as to why this hasn't happened.  It's not that their flour is so much better.  It's that the French flour is so much worse, or to put it in less inflammatory words, French flour has less protein.  North American bakers have historically opted for higher protein wheats.  There may well be other reasons such as lower yields, etc....dunno.  Now Canadian prairie wheat growers have come up with a wheat suitable to their growing conditions, and that wheat duplicates French wheat.  What's the difference?  Less protein.  Here's a link:  http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/library/research/popups/wheat_Prarie_Spring.jsp [1]  It would be interesting to see if some of our bakers out there have access to this type of grain and could report back on their findings.

What do you think?

Cliff. Johnston