The Best Bread I've Ever Had

In the movie Ratatouille, Colette says to Linguini, "How do you tell how good bread is without tasting it? Not the smell, not the look, but the *sound* of the crust. Listen." She presses the bread between her hands. "Oh, symphony of crackle. Only great bread sound this way."

I was reminded of this scene when I encountered the best bread I've ever had. On a recent trip to Vietnam, my friends and I couldn't help noticing how good the bread that came with our free breakfast was. Our breakfast was nothing fancy. Eggs, bacon or sausage, bread with jam and butter, yogurt, fruit and coffee. Since we booked our hotel room for a meager 25.00 USD per night, we were not expecting anything 5-star. However, we were pleasantly surprised that everything was freshly cooked, the meal simple but very good quality.

So when I called my mom in the middle of the trip and she casually mentioned that she liked the bread in Vietnam, I thought I'd bring home some. It should be easy enough to buy bread from the Bahn Mi stalls that are on practically every corner in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). So on our last night, I picked a random Bahn Mi stall off the street and bought 10 baguettes. The baguettes spent 12 hours in a flimsy plastic bag inside my big crossbody purse which I hand-carried all the way to Manila. By the time we got home, they had somehow lost their shape. But after 5 minutes in the toaster, this is how it looked:

I cut it with a bread knife and I experienced for the first time, the sound, the "symphony of crackle." Not the sound of saw cutting through wood. The crust was very light and flaky. The inside was soft and simply melted in the mouth. Eating it slightly warmed, with just a dab of butter, was sheer joy. It was even better than the ones we had for breakfast at the hotel. Heck, it was in my book, way better than any bread I've ever tasted in much pricier settings, EVER. 

The brightest side of it all, is that I got each 10-inch baguette for 3,000.00 Dong. Roughly 6 pesos or about 15 US cents for a very well-made bread, from some random Banh Mi stall, considered humble street food in HCMC. How I envy the Vietnamese, who can manage to eat so well at such affordable prices!