I moved to Washington D.C in October 2009 after living 2 years in France. I used to live at Charles Michels , a very nice neighborhood surrounded by amazing “boulangeries”; everyday you could feel the smell of breads and buttery croissants coming out of their stores, welcoming you to buy a loaf of bread or just a mini pastry to treat yourself on your way home. It wasn’t easy to live here, the amount of temptations per square feet didn’t help my willingness of just trying to have a healthy and organized diet; it was just impossible to resist! I had some of the most amazing years of my life when living in Paris!

I arrived to Washington D.C with two bags, my fiancé and a lot of dreams. My plans included working for a multinational company, maybe an NGO, or, if I was lucky, the Colombian Embassy. I was ready to apply all the knowledge I had gain with my economics undergraduate degree and my master in International Business. When I started looking for jobs, my hopes began to turn into frustration and the only thing that kept me going (besides my super positive fiancé, Santi) was cooking and baking.  After trying to find a baguette like the ones I used to eat in France with no positive result, I decided to start baking them myself.  However, my last experience with bread baking had been catastrophic; around 15 years ago I tried to bake some bread out of a simple recipe. My poor grandmother had to soak the breads for 1 whole week in water so she could feed them to the birds at home.  My brother still makes fun of my stone breads. 

Considering this “unlucky” experience I decided to start with a basic challenge: pre-made sourdough bread.  I just had to add water, knead for a little bit and bake; the chances of baking another batch of stone bread with this recipe were low.  It was a total success and Santi (now my husband) decided it was time to buy a bread recipes book (I guess he was concerned of my well-being and tried to find me something to do while looking for jobs).  In no time, I was spending more time baking than looking for a “serious” job and Santi was eating all types of breads at night: ciabatta, sourdough, pain de campagne and sometimes, I would try baguettes too although not with the results that I expected. As time passed and the amount of bread “production” at home became uneatable for the 2 of us, we started giving away breads to our neighbors, friends or whoever might be interested in trying it (this included our hair stylist and a weird neighbor that we met once) – It is not easy to make new friends as an expat!

After all this baking that lasted for a couple of months I knew something was missing besides the job that I should have found some months ago: A good baguette recipe.  Neither Internet nor the books were able to provide a solution to this issue. So far, I hadn’t been able to find a decent baguette recipe, or one suited for my skills. All in all, I had not been able to get the result I was looking for. Following what my mom used to say: if you are going to do something do it right or don’t do it, I decided to take extreme measures: I decided to go back to the source: I WAS GOING BACK TO FRANCE to learn how to bake bread!