Baguettes

Keeping it super simple with my recipe for the simplest baguettes/batons/french sticks ever… I promise you they’re easy and cheap to make.

These are readily available normally at bakeries but with the current situation in the world and everybody suddenly becoming bakers, people are doing more home baking. Plus who doesn’t like fresh homemade bread?!

You only need 4 simple ingredients, thats really it. Nothing special or fancy, just a very basic recipe with tasty end results, sometimes simplicity is the key to success. Especially when it comes to baking.

I was thinking of compiling a blog post with ‘baking basic’ recipes, perfect for everybody to make and try. Is this something you’d be interested in?

Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

 

Ingredients:

500g Strong white bread flour.

8g Salt.

15g Fresh yeast.

290ml Water, warmed.

 

Method:

 

Before you get into making the baguettes, you’ll want to do some prep work. Weigh up all your ingredients, prepare your baguettes trays (only if its needed) and get your equipment ready, I recommend a mixing bowl.

To start on the dough, grab a mixing bowl and place the flour and salt into it. Give the two of them a good mix until they are fully incorporated.

Then you can go ahead and add in the yeast and water. If you’re using a stand mixer, mix on a low speed for 2 minutes, followed by 4 minutes on a medium-high speed.

Once mixed, the dough should be clear and leave the bowl almost spotlessly clean.

On a lightly floured surface, give the dough a brief knead just to make it smooth and elastic, bring the dough into a ball.

Give a clean mixing bowl a light brushing with some flavourless/colourless oil and place the dough into it. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave somewhere warm and allow the dough to proof for roughly around and hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

After it has proofed, you can flour your work surface and place the dough onto it and you can knock it back. This is simply the process of removing the gases that have built up in the dough while it was proofing (plus it shows the yeast you were using is active and not dead). Bring the dough back into a ball.

Now you can scale your dough up into 275g balls, round them off into a ball shape and cover with clingfilm (so a skin doesn’t form on top).

Roll the balls out to long sausage shapes, keeping them as consistent as possible. Only roll them out to be as long as the baguette tray you’re using. Once they are rolled out, you can then place them onto the trays and cover loosely with clingfilm.

Allow to proof for a further 30-45 minutes (or until they are well risen). While your bread is proofing for the second time, it’s the ideal time to preheat the oven to 230˚c/445˚f.

Once they have finished the second proof, remove the clingfilm and get a sharp serrated edged knife. Using the knife, slash 3 cuts into each baguette, then place into your preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes (your oven may or may not need more or less time, use the baking times as a guide).

Now they are baked, you can allow them to cool fully on the tray, then enjoy them as a filled baguette or turn them into garlic bread, which is what I’ll be doing next week, so join me then.

That’s all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back soon with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my other social’s – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The YouTube tutorial will be linked down below.