Baguette Basket

Before dawn in a French bakery, the shaped loaves went to rest, each baguette cradled in its own long basket to hold its form through the final rise. Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, these are long narrow bannetons, woven with a braided rim and lined in linen gone soft from years of flour. A banneton is a proofing basket, made to hold the dough while it rose so the loaf kept its shape before the oven, the cloth floured so nothing would stick. Sylvie would line them down a table with bread, or lay one out for fruit and flowers, five in all from a working boulangerie.