When it comes to perfection in breads, the ingredients matter, but they don’t matter as much as what happens after the mixing is done. That simple recognition took me a surprisingly long time to see, and it’s especially true of the French baguette. Its ingredients are so simple that they can’t be improved. You add something only to take away the hope of delight at the table, making it more complex and paradoxically less enjoyable.
When it comes to baguette ingredients, the perfection of something that is simply perfect is an imperfect and vain hope. As for the recipe ingredients, they’re pretty much standard everywhere you look, though some quibble about using honey instead of sugar or how much water or yeast you use—even though the differences, in my opinion, amount to trivialities. Here’s my list of ingredients:
Ingredients
3.25 cups (770 ml) cool water
2 tablespoons (30 ml) honey
2 teaspoons (10 ml) yeast (or one package)
1 tablespoon (15 ml) salt
7 cups (1650 ml) of all-purpose flour
That’s it!
Technique. What you do with the ingredients is the real trick
How should you mix the dough? What about proofing? What is the way to shape the bread? And, I suppose, other points along the way. In my search to find the perfect baguette, I quickly found that I needed to qualify and rejigger. My search became an investigation of what this little corner of perfection was for me.
It turned out that I wasn’t really interested in the classic baguette—the long and thin bread that could be shoved under your arm so you could bring it home on your bicycle. (The word baguette means “baton” or “stick” so the name fits the shape.) I want crispy crust, so crispy that it would crunch with a finger squeeze. The texture, soft inside and airy—give me delicious holes. But I want a fat, substantial, loaf-y baguette, which of course is an affront to the original and ever reigning definition of the baguette in France. It’s more truly a bâtard, French for “bastard.”
This is a perfecting bread—a journey, not a destination, you know.
Making the dough and the “stretch knead”
If you want to eat bread tomorrow, you need to start the day before, probably in the afternoon or evening. This bread sits and “proofs” in the refrigerator overnight. The preparation of the dough before you stick it in the fridge takes a little time—a few minutes spread over a couple of hours. And the routine isn’t hard.
First, just mix the ingredients. I toss everything intpo a large bowl (and it must be large) and the use a fork to mix it up. My initial mixing doesn’t end up with a smoothly uniform dough. There are areas of moist dough and areas where the flour seems to want to stay dry for a little while longer. Just mix it up, and then cover the bowl with a towel and go away for 20-30 minutes.
Second, there isn’t kneading; there’s pulling and stretching. I have to admit that initially I was a bit skeptical about this method of kneading. It isn’t hard, though it is messy. You face the bowl of sticky dough, move your (very nice and clean) fingers down the edge of the bowl opposite your belly, gently plunging your fingertips between bowl and dough. Pull the dough off the edge of the bowl and when your fingers are nearly to the bowl’s bottom, grasp the dough and pull up gently. You can pull the dough about a foot or more over the bowl. The point is to stretch the dough without letting it break. (I’ve never had dough break, even when I’ve suspended the whole sticky blob above the bowl.) The last movement after the stretch is laying the dough back into the bowl. You just let the dough go back into the bowl and then allow the stretched dough to fold over the rest.
Then, after the dough is returned to the bowl in nice folded manner, turn the bowl one-quarter turn and repeat the stretching process. Do the stretches until you’re back to where you started. Then cover the dough, and let it sit for between 30-60 minutes. Really, I think you could let the dough rest as long as you wanted; typically I return to the dough after about 45 minutes or so, but I’ve gone longer than an hour in the past without any problem.
Third, repeat the stretching two or three times. You will notice a dramatic change in dough consistency when you return to do the second stretch. It’ll be much smoother with a consistent texture. I’ve noticed that the dough seems to have a stringy, even a fibrous feel, but I’ve not figured out why I detect that.
Now the really easy part: You cover the bowl with plastic wrap and shove it in the refigerator. Let it sit there overnight to “proof.”
Shaping the loaves and baking
In the morning, take the proofed dough out of the fridge. It will have risen quite dramatically, despite the cool. I frequently see the dough pushing against the plastic wrap, and it is quite sticky. Flour a portion of your countertop, and don’t be too scimpy with the flour (despite what you might see in other baguette recipes). Turn the dough onto the floured surface, using a spatula to release the dough from the sides of the bowl.
If you fashioned baguettes from this amount of dough, you’d probably have about 8-10 skinny sticks of bread, but for my loaves I divide the round flat dough into thirds and gently shape the pieces into rounded lumps. You don’t need to roll the pieces into balls; just shape them into circles of dough. You want to retain the bulk of the risen dough, so that it’s got good holes in the texture of the bread. Pro tip: be sure to flour your hands, or you’ll have trouble shaping the dough. It’ll stick to your hands.
While the bread dough rests for about 20-30 minutes, put a cup of hot water into an aluminum or steel baking pan and place it on the bottom or on the lowest shelf in the oven. If you have a baking stone (lots of people do for baking pizza dough), place it on the shelf above the pan with water. Preheat the oven to 475 F (250 C). I’ve also used a cast iron frying pan as the water container, but it helps if you don’t put water into the cast iron pan. Just let it heat up in the oven. The baking pan seems easier to use, I think.
Put about two cups of water into a microwaveable container. Put a couple of cups of hot water into a spray bottle, too. You’ll use the water to generate copious amounts of steam in the hot oven after you put the bread loaves in the oven to bake. You just want to get these items ready ahead of time.
After about 20-30 minutes, return to the dough and begin to shape the loaves. I won’t give the instructions here, because Maurizio Leo has great instructions pubished in the King Arthur Baking Company website. See “How to shape a bâtard” (https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2022/01/18/how-to-shape-a-batard). Once again, try to preserve the fluffiness of the dough, since that will give it the airy texture.
I use a “couche” to hold the shaped loaves to let them rise. It’s basically a roughly woven linen or cotton rectangle that have enough heft to hold lots of flour in the weave and to retain a shape. You fold the material to create short fabric walls between the loaves. You can go ahead and place the loaves in well-floured sections of the couche, but I’ve learned that you can just use parchment as a liner for the couche sections, and avoid the mess. Using parchment also makes moving the risen loaves into the oven a bit easier.
I’ve found that after I’ve put the loaves in the couche to rise, they are ready after about an hour. I’ve baked two loaves first, since my oven can’t hold three loaves. A few minutes before you’re ready to pop loaves into the oven, microwave the water for a couple minutes to heat it up.
The last thing to do before putting the loaves in the oven to bake is slicing the top of the loaves. You need a very sharp knife or a sharp razor blade. I cut a line lengthwise on the top of the bread loaf, but you can be more decorative with two or three diagonal slashes. This cutting is important to let the loaf benefit from “oven spring,” which is a last and often dramatic rise in the hot oven. Looks quite decorative and appealing, too, if you ask me.
Open the oven, being careful to stay away from steam that will come out of the open door. Place the loaves on the baking stone. Pour the hot water into the baking pan on the lower shelf, and spray the sides of the oven with water using the spray bottle. You should do this water work quickly, but safely. The steam will rise quickly, and fill the oven. Close the oven door to keep the steam inside the oven.
Be careful. The steam is really hot!
Baking
Set the oven timer to 15 minutes. I generally check the state of the loaves at about 12 minutes or so by peering through the oven window. That way I don’t have to let steam escape to check on the loaves. If you don’t have an oven window, I dunno—take a quick peek? Or not. After 15 minutes of baking, flip the loaves over and let the bottoms of the loaves bake for 2-4 minutes.
Take the bread out of the oven and let cool on a cooling rack.
People say to let cool completely before slicing, but that’s malarkey and actually rather cruel to the baker. Warm bread is delicious, so let the baker eat!
Other bread recipes
Delightful little breads: Laugenbrötchen One of my favorites to whip up in an hour or so. This bread roll is perfect for breakfast with butter and jam.
Perfect sweet potato pumpernickel bread Another staple, but a little easier to make than the baguette. If you’re not a fan of sweet potatoes, try the recipe with regular old Russetts or whatever comes from Idaho.
