Best Baguette

      At the beginning of 2009 I moved to Portland, Oregon to attend culinary school.  While many people see Portland as a food mecca for people that are seeking farm to table foods and unique dining experiences I was most excited about the Asian food in the area.  I remember my first trip to Oregon stopping in Hood River at China Gorge and thinking to myself "why can't we have Chinese food like this in the South"  but this was just the tip of the iceberg. 
       When you are used to pork fried rice, moo goo gai pan, General Tao's chicken and egg drop soup a bowl of beautiful noodle soup with diakon, black mushrooms, duck and cilantro in a beautiful clear broth is like a breath of fresh air.  There are Chinese restaurants that serve real Chinese food to real Chinese people, Vietnamese noodle shops and Japanese restaurants where they serve more than sushi and hibachi. Of course Mark and I had our favorite restaurants, but we were always willing and happy to try something new.  One of our favorite Japanese places was The Takahishi where they had the best ramen I've ever tasted.  Now I'm not talking the packaged stuff.  No, this was beautiful, aromatic, and fresh.  Perfect.
      This post, though is not about ramen.  It's about Baguettes.  I know you are confused at this point.  What do baguettes have to do with Asian food?  Well for about 90 years the French occupied Vietnam.  When they left the thing that stuck was the French breads.  Many of these though got a Vietnamese spin.  The Baguette made instead of with all wheat flour got some rice flour added in making it light and fluffy.  Then they made sandwiches filling them with traditional Vietnamese ingredients:  Daikon and carrot slaw, cilantro, head cheese or marinated beef and kwepie mayonnaise.  I learned about these delightful sandwiches at Best Baguette, and since we moved I've been craving one.
      While scanning through one of my baking books I found that I've been sitting on a recipe for the baguettes for years so today Mark and I gave it a go.  First try the baguettes didn't turn out perfect.  The crust is off and there wasn't enough water in the bread.  I really should know better than cutting a recipe in half first try.  Also think they needed a little bit of steam to rise correctly, but they still taste good, so we went ahead with the other parts.  Mark made out slaw, I pulled cilantro out of my garden and we marinated thin cut pieces of beef as well as come bacon (yes marinated bacon) and all I can really say is that we are going to have to do this again and again until I get these baguettes right!  Because still it was absolutely delicious.