Classic French Baguette Recipe

Homemade baguettes are the ultimate bread making experience in my opinion. They take some time to make but are really pretty simple. The ingredient list is short but the flavor is amazing. You are going to love to know how to make authentic French Baguettes at home; they are such an amazing bread.

My Favorite Baguette Recipe

The perfect baguette is crispy on the outside, perfectly chewy on the inside, has a complex flavor, and are one of those breads that feel like such a simple pleasure in life. Few things in life are as luxurious yet simple as a fresh baguette; add some good quality European butter and you're eating some of the most delicious food in the world.

I've done my baguette research.

I did a lot of research when it came to making baguettes and there are multiple techniques. I looked at major baking blogs, flour companies (like King Arthur Flour), and I researched the winners for the Best Baguettes in Paris Competition (note to self: next time include a trip to Paris in your research...). I tried many many recipes and discovered that I like using a long cold rising time for my baguettes best.

I've been working on this post and recipe for months and I'm so pleased with the recipe that I have to share with you. It has minimal ingredients, it takes some time (plan on 16+ hours), but the result is some of the best bread I've ever eaten (and that's saying something).

Baguettes have a magical property to them. They are soul food on some level and you'll understand once you make and eat them too. I hope you find some of the healing and soothing comfort this simple recipe brings. It's worth the time and I hope you find yourself making them weekly as I have been. Long live the slow and thoughtful staple foods of the world.

Ingredients in French Baguettes:

• Water: so simple, you'll have the best luck using good clean water. If your water is highly treated or smells like cholrine out of the tap, consider using filtered water. Breads like this tend to love mineral-rich well water.
• All Purpose Flour: Use a high quality all-purpose flour like Bob's Red Mill or King Arthur Flour. Their all-purpose flour has a gluten content close to European flours and you'll have good results with them.
• Salt: use a kosher or sea salt here. Table salt has too much of an acidic taste for this recipe.
• Yeast: use instant yeast for this recipe, it might also be called rapid rise or quick rise yeast
• Honey: I love adding just a little honey to this recipe, it helps the yeast do it's thing and I think it add some flavor to the bread as well. It doesn't really sweetened the bread, it just add some nice compliments to the flavor.

Characteristics of a Classic Baguettes:

The outside should be dark and cripy, the inside should be airy, light, and have just a bit of chewiness to it, and the flavor should taste like the best bread of your life. The flavor is much less sour than sourdough bread, but it's full and robust like other artisan breads.

You aren't working with a lot of ingredients so all of the methods in which the bread is produced matter. You can use yeast and let it rise quickly, shape it like a baguette, and bake it, but it will be lacking the depth of flavor and the texture won't be as amazing.

The perfect baguette texture:

The texture is achieved by taking some time after the dough has been made to "stretch and fold" the dough, essentially you are going to give the dough a little kneading session a few times after the dough is made. This helps the gluten to develop. Then when you shape the dough into the baguette shape, you do so in a way they encourages chewiness and pockets for air bubbles (I'll show you how!).

The outside texture is achieved by cooking the dough at a very high temperature AND by adding a pan of water to the oven so that it is creating steam. The steamy cooking environment mixed with the high temperature are the things that make perfect baguettes. Nothing you have to do for this recipe is hard, it's just a few extra steps that turn the dough from traditional bread dough into something really special.

The perfect baguette flavor:

By using a slow fermentation process for this dough, you develop the flavor of the dough. After the dough has been made and you've kneaded it a few times over a few hours, you'll cover it well and pop it in the fridge for 12 to 18 hours (depending on your time schedule). This method of cold retarding the dough is where so much of the magic is made. And the best part is, you don't have to babysit. You do have wait, but it's not like you are actively doing anything for those hours.

This slow rise is also changing the texture of the dough! So it's a double win.

My baker's schedule for baguettes:

1. Mix up my dough while I'm making dinner.
2. Stretch and fold over the course of the evening while dinner is cooking, I'm cleaning up etc.
3. Tuck the dough away for the night in the fridge before I go to bed.
4. I adjust the next days baking depending on when we want to eat the baguettes. If they are for lunch, I'll get the dough out of the fridge 3 hours before we want to eat. If I want them for dinner, I'll get them out 3 hours before dinner. If you don't have a set time of when you want them, just make them when it's best for your schedule.
5. 3 hours before I want baguettes, I remove the dough from the fridge, divide it into three pieces, gently press the dough pieces into small rectangles on the counter, cover and let rise for an hour.
6. After that hour rise, I'll shape the baguettes and place them on my baguette pan to rise for another 45 minutes to an hour. I preheat my oven once the baguettes are shaped and get my pan of water in there to start warming.
7. After that 45 minutes to an hour, I bake my baguettes.
8. Let the baguettes cool slightly before serving and enjoy!

Special equipment needed for this baguette recipe:

I really wanted to make this attainable for everyone! You don't even need a stand mixer for this recipe. After much trial and error though I did decided that buying a baguette pan was worth it. The bread rises right in the pan and the pan goes right in the oven. It doesn't take up a lot of room to store and I've really really liked the results. The pans aren't expensive either.

If you already have other bread making supplies like a bread baking stone, a peel, and a couche (a heavy-duty towel used for shaping), by all means, you can use those here. It just felt too hard to get the bread to transfer well and I figured getting a baguette pan was just as easy as getting a stone, peel, and couche if you didn't have them already.

The only other specialty tool you'll need is a razor blade or a bread slashing tool called a lame. You can use a very sharp serrated knife to cut the slits in your bread before baking but I've found a razor blade or lame to just work so much better. It will cut deeply without tearing the bread or roughing it up too much (you can deflate the risen dough by trying to use knife that doesn't cut well for scoring).

Here's how to make baguettes, step by step photos:

How to stretch and fold your dough:

First you'll mix up your dough; it come together really easily just stirring it with a wooden spoon. Then over the next 3 or so hours, you'll "stretch and fold" your dough every 30 to 45 minutes or so, a total of 4 times.

Don't overthink this part, the timing isn't a huge deal, so don't sweat it if you do it a little more or less and a little faster or slower than at the 30 to 45 minute mark. The idea is that you knead the dough just a bit, a few times, over the course of a couple of hours. It's way flexible. This helps to make the inside of your baguette perfectly chewy.

When I say "stretch and fold", here's what you do: put your hand between the dough and the bowl on one side and grab the dough, gently pull it up to give it a good stretch (if the dough starts to break, stop pulling, you are just stretching the dough as far as it wants to stretch without breaking it) and then fold it back down into the middle of the bowl. Give the bowl a quarter turn and repeat the process, working your way around the bowl. I normally think of the bowl as a square and stretch and pull the dough 4 times, once on each side of my square. It'll take 15 or so seconds to do this.

Do this a few times over the next few hours. Then cover up the bowl well with a beeswax wrap or a piece of plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for the next 12-18 hours.

After your dough has chilled for 12-18 hours, remove it from the bowl and divide it out into three even pieces.

Pat the pieces of dough out into rectangles (don't worry to much about the shape, the cold dough is pretty stiff, just pat it out...) and are about 1 inch thick. Cover with a towel and let rise for 1 hour.

How to shape baguettes:

Once the dough has rested at room temperature for an hour, pull it into a rectangle that is about 11 inches by 8 inches. Then fold the dough into thirds as shown in the pictures above. Once the dough has been folded, pinch the seem shut.

Gently use your hands to roll the log of dough out into a baguette that is 15 inches long. Use your hands and the rolling motion to gently taper the ends. Then you'll place the baguettes in a baguette pan. Repeat with remaining dough. Let the dough rise for about an hour in the baguette pan and then bake!

More bread recipes:

• My Favorite Go-To Sourdough Bread Recipe
• Homemade Italian Bread
• Mom’s Easy French Bread Recipe
• Jolyn’s Extra Soft White Bread Recipe
• Mom’s 4 Loaf Wheat Bread Recipe

If you’ve tried this Baguette recipe or any other recipe on Bless this Mess, then don’t forget to rate the recipe and leave me a comment below! I would love to hear about your experience making it. And if you snapped some pictures of it, share it with me on Instagram so I can repost on my stories AND add your photo to your comment so that other can see your creation.

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I hope that you make time to whip up some of these amazing French baguettes in your home and enjoy them as much as we have! I'd LOVE to see pictures if you do!