French bread over time
101 of the 138 recipes carry a publication date, from 1999 to 2026. Below: how many pages each year, whether the typical loaf changed between the oldest and newest, and the oldest and newest pages themselves.
A date here is the one the page gives for itself: when it was published, or last updated. Sites often refresh an old recipe and its date together, so read these as when the pages went up, not when the recipes were created.
Recipes per year
Dated pages by the year they give. The first bar gathers the 2 pages from before 2007. Shading marks the periods compared below.
How the typical loaf changed
No ingredient shows a clear change between French bread pages dated before 2021 and those dated 2021 or later. The medians move a little from period to period, but by no more than chance would with this many recipes.
| Per 100 g flour | Before 202157 recipes | 2021 and later44 recipes |
|---|---|---|
| WaterNo clear change | 65% | 70% |
| SaltNo clear change | 2% | 2% |
| YeastNo clear change | 0.9% | 0.8% |
| SugarNo clear change | 0% | 0% |
| FatNo clear change | 0% | 0% |
Each cell is the median baker's percentage in that period: grams of the ingredient per 100 g of flour. Higher and lower compare the newest period with the oldest, only where the change is clear (see how below). Periods are cut at year boundaries so each holds about the same number of recipes.
Ingredients that gained or lost ground
Share of each period's recipes that list the ingredient. Only changes between the oldest and newest periods too large to be likely chance are listed.
| Recipes using | Before 2021 | 2021 and later |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flourLess common | 98% | 61% |
| Bread flourMore common | 7% | 34% |
Oldest and newest pages
Oldest dates
Apr 14, 1999
Gold Medal® Classic French Bread · bettycrocker.comDec 12, 2000
French Bread · bettycrocker.comSep 3, 2007
Baguettes inratables d'Andréa : la meilleure recette · marmiton.orgMay 10, 2008
Baguettes de campagne · ptitchef.comJun 26, 2008
La baguette ficelle · ptitchef.com
Newest dates
Feb 14, 2026
Chocolate Baguette · okonomikitchen.comNov 22, 2025
Baguettes · tastesbetterfromscratch.comOct 16, 2025
Vietnamese Bánh Mì Baguette · siftandsimmer.comSep 12, 2025
Crusty French Baguette Recipe · bakingamoment.comJun 7, 2025
Baguette aux olives et tomates · bettybossi.ch
How the dates are read
Each date is the publication date in the recipe page's own structured data. 24 of the 138 recipes have none, or one without a year (such as “December 3”), and are left out.
13 more carry a date their site gave to many pages at once, which marks a site move or redesign rather than a publication: 2018-01-01 on tasteofhome.com (222 pages across Recipe Lab, 4 of them here), 2025-08-29 on cuisine.journaldesfemmes.fr (8 pages across Recipe Lab, 2 of them here) and 2019-03-04 on bettybossi.ch (13 pages across Recipe Lab, 2 of them here), and 5 more like it. They are left out too.
A change counts as clear when the newest period's median differs from the oldest period's by at least a tenth and a rank test puts the gap at 2.5 standard errors or more. For the share of recipes using an ingredient, the bar is 3 standard errors and 8 percentage points. Every ingredient is tested, so a lower bar would flag chance differences on most pages.
2026 is still in progress, so its bar is short for a reason that has nothing to do with baking.