French Bread Recipe

Here’s the recipe I used for my bread making class I posted about on Tuesday. This is a French Baguette recipe which combines some of the ideas I learned at school, with some of Julia Child’s research in her bread book, as well as personal trial and error.

I want to warn most of you this takes patience and practice. It also takes a good oven. I don’t have any of those things, but it still worked, so just try it! You have nothing to lose. If it turns out bad that’s the wonder of being able to buy one!

French Baguette (yields 4 baguettes)

• 1000 g bread flour
• 600 g water (98-115 degree F, warm to the touch basically)
• 100 grams old dough (previous day’s dough OR combine 100 g flour, 70 g water, and pinch of yeast and allow to sit for an hour at room temperature)
• 8 grams fresh yeast (4 g dry fast acting yeast)
• 20 grams salt

* If you don’t have a scale this can all be measure simply plug it in to an online converter. My teachers at FCI would be cringing right now, but hell, this is real life, not cooking school. It’s not going to turn out perfect, just have fun with it!

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees, place a pizza stone in oven if you have one.
2. Place water and flour in the mixer bowl.
3. Mix, using a dough hook, at a speed of 2 for 2 minutes to hydrate. Or if by hand, mix all ingredients together.
4. Autolyse (aka allow the dough to rest hydrating!) for 10 minutes.
5. Add the old dough and yeast. Mix at speed 2 for 3 minutes.
6. Add salt. Mix on speed 2 for 2 minutes, or until you can pull a window.
7. Allow dough to rise, on counter until double in size, could take an hour or three, depends on temperature. The bread will tell you.
8. Punch down the dough to get all the gas out flip it over, tuck into a tiny ball and allow to rise again. Again, probably about an hour.
9. Roll onto a flour surface, punch down, and divide into equal baguettes. Use a scale for this.
10. Allow dough to rise for 10 minutes, just basically a “rest.”
11. Shape dough and put on a cookie sheet. Allow one more rest.
12. Slash the tops of the dough and spritzer with water.
13. Bake until golden.

A big misconception is that bread is best “fresh out of the oven.” It’s not! Don’t ruin it! Wait until the bread has cooled, THEN dive in!