No Stupid Questions

For some soups, a great way to serve them is to toast a thick slice of one of the uncut loaves (so you can cut it thick), then place it in the middle of a wide bowl and serve the soup on top of that. Sometimes, you put another sauce that harmonizes well with the souo on the bread, first.

Then you eat it as the soup absorbs into the bread, experiencing a combination of soggy and dry bread textures along with the flavour of the broth (and sauce, if present).

It wouldn't work with a standard loaf of bread, as both the slices and the bread itself aren't thick enough to keep it from quickly going fully soggy. Breaking crackers or dipping toast into soup are pale imitations (ok, dipping toast isn't that far off, but I still prefer a good thick piece of toast).

Also, if you take a baguette and cut it into thinner slices then toast/bake those slices, you end up with a much cheaper version of those artisan crackers that are just dried pieces of baguette.

Also, look up beef wellington for one of the more extreme uses of non-standard bread.

Not pictured: baguette

How are you meant to beat a baguette????

Just punch it dude, it's bread.

This is literally called nostupidquestions and people are saying it's a stupid question...??? some people just didn't experience the same things. https://xkcd.com/1053/

A big reason is different texture, with the semisphere shape the middle can be fluffy while the outside is crunchy, for baguettes it's basically a sandwich that the whole thing fits in your mouth in one orientation, so it's a different way to eat it.

Think of a baguette as a 3 feet long sub-sandwich. Now it starts to make sense doesn't it ?

You cut a baguette down the middle to make a sandwich

Like this

For dipping in Soup, you fool

US , EU and FR variants.

Side question: Why do people buy baguettes? Do they make sandwiches with them?

Sometimes, sometimes just eat with butter. They make good toasts too.

How do you even make a sandwich from them?

Just cut it open and put the ham and cheese inside it, not much to it really. Either cut the slice in half if I'm feeling poor or fold it in two if I'm feeling rich.

Depends if they are baked in a container or not.

Baguettes are delicious, use a knife if you want to do a sandwich, what's the difficulty?

Look for baguette sandwich in DDG

You just slice it horizontally for that.

ELI5: dough can take any shape you give it.

You can load the dough into a metallic shape and close it with a lid, and you'll get picture 1.

Or you can make a ball out of it and leave it be on a flat surface, and it will naturally expand to look like picture 2.

Side question: narrow shape makes baguette have a more crispy texture, which many people like. It's also usually produced using a special kind of sourdough, which makes it have unique and rich taste. People eat it as is (just biting it from one end to another) or make small open sandwiches by cutting it in slices and putting all sorts of toppings on top of them.

industry vs. artisan goods?

personally i eat the whole baguette.

The sandwich bread is mass produced, baked in racks of loaf pans, designed to give very consistent and convenient slices for making sandwiches.

The second pic is the way many people prefer to bake a more rustic loaf. The dough is just placed on a flat sheet, so there's much more crust, and it can just rise however it does. It's less convenient for sandwiches.

No baguettes aren't used for sandwiches, they're used to serve bread with the meal. If you're eating dinner, you don't really want a slice of sandwich bread, you want something more convenient to hold in your hand, dip in you pasta sauce, or whatever. Plus it has a higher ratio of crust to insides, which can be nice.

Edit: I replied to someone who corrected me, but apparently baguettes are very much used for sandwiches, I've just never seen it. Apparently I'm an ignorant American.

The rectangular loaf became popular due to packing efficiency. You can fit more of them in less space.

In Brazil we have a small baguette called "French bread"! It's very convenient and absolutely everywhere. And it tastes good, white bread in comparison tastes like nothing and has a shitty texture

One's cooked in a pan, the other not.

You can use baguettes in multiple ways like other breads, imagination is the limit.

-Cut it on the bias (at an angle), toast and use to dip in soup or mop up sauce. I do this with onion soup to top it, buttered and sprinkled with a good melting cheese, place on top of soup in bowl and broil in oven until melted and browning.

-Slice in half long ways, butter with a good garlic butter recipe, bake in oven until browned serve with spaghetti.

-Once it's old, stale and hard, cube it up (can do it fresh too) use as croutons for salads or grind it up for bread crumbs to cook with.

Cheese fondue.

One word: Bánh mì

Regarding your main question: you don't fit a square in a round hole.