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What is the English word describing a long thin loaf of French bread, which crust is appetisingly golden and crunchy, and the bread inside is light and fluffy?

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I've read through some of your questions and answers, and they all are riveted on food. You say you are a foreign cook, which makes it understandable, but I still think that you should refer to the cooking section of StackExchange instead of EL&U – Paola Apr 20 '12 at 18:21
@Paola - Why have you used "through" rather than "across"? – Xavier Vidal Hernández Apr 20 '12 at 19:37
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@ Anglo Saxon. I used "read through" as per its definition of "to read something carefully from beginning to end in order to check details". I'm not aware of any usage of "read across". – Paola Apr 22 '12 at 22:54

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Frankly I think most Americans call it, "a loaf of French bread" or simply "a French bread".

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Or baguette, at least in the Northeast US where there are large numbers of francophones. – KitFox♦ Apr 20 '12 at 17:26
I don't know that I'd go as far as most- certainly many do but baguette is not an uncommon word in America. It is frequently seen on menus along with other loan words like croissant. Like here for example- if surfers can understand it- it can't be too foreign. – Jim Apr 20 '12 at 17:28
I'm not sure how you'd find statistics on this. I expect an ngram search would find many more instances of "loaf" than "baguette", but most of those would be referring to bread in general. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a regionalism, but in New York, Ohio, and Michigan, where I've spent most of my life, I don't recall ever hearing someone use the word "baguette". I've heard it on television, that's about it. – Jay Apr 23 '12 at 14:29
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It's the same as it is in French: a baguette

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+1: baguette is pretty much international – nico Apr 20 '12 at 19:01
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In the UK we call it a stick of French bread (baton or baguette are a bit "middle-class")

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so 'stick' is upper or lower class? – Mitch Apr 20 '12 at 18:07
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Eugh. I detest people calling it a 'stick' of bread. It's a 'baguette'. – Jez Apr 20 '12 at 18:29
@Jez,Mitch: I suspect most Brits wouldn't know the difference between a baguette and a ficelle (which I much prefer). I lived in France for a year, and I've nothing against the people or their language, but I do think it's slightly posh/affected to use their words when we've got perfectly good ones of our own. Though of course that's why we have pork, beef, and mutton - French words for what our Anglo-Saxon ancestors had to rear, slaughter, and cook for their posh Norman overlords! – FumbleFingers Apr 20 '12 at 23:22
You mean bourgeois? ^)^ – Robusto Apr 21 '12 at 10:26
@Robusto: Only a bit, but yeah. Around the time "English" really got going (Chaucer...Shakespeare), "courtly" language was French, and "churchly" was Latin. There's still a bit of a tendency to cast Anglo Saxon as the language of the peasantry (I f**king well hope OP reads this and recognises I'm rooting for his monicker as well as our shared tradition! ;) – FumbleFingers Apr 21 '12 at 13:35
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It could also be ficelle.

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In the U.S., I think both ficelles and baguettes commonly get called baguettes (although you sometimes see ficelles that are called ficelles). – Peter Shor Apr 21 '12 at 0:08
@PeterShor: There's a bakery a mile from me that sells both. The ficelles are thinner — mostly crust. – Robusto Apr 21 '12 at 1:49
There's a bakery near where I grew up where you can buy a "grande baguette" (a baguette) or a "baguette" (a ficelle). But at least they get the French gender correct. – Peter Shor Apr 21 '12 at 2:13

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