• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

www.WeekendBakery.com

Weekend Bakery

The place for the ambitious home baker

  • Home
  • Webshop
    • Rijsmandjes
    • Brood bakken
      • Mixen & Mengen
      • Snijden, rollen, schrapen
      • Rijzen
      • Bakken
      • Presenteren
    • Broodbak sets
    • Uitstekers
      • Uitsteker sets
      • Speciale XL uitstekers
      • Dieren
      • Bloemen en planten
      • Transport
      • Vormen
      • Lente & zomer
      • Kerst & winter
      • Halloween
      • Overig
    • Zoet bakken
      • Bakgereedschap
      • Papieren bakvormen
      • Overige bakvormen
      • Speculaasvormen en koekstempels
      • Houten lepels, spatels, schepjes…
      • Kerst & feest
      • Zoet presenteren
  • Recipes
    • Best bread recipes
    • Sweet baking
    • Nederlandse recepten
    • Bread baking tips
    • Bread movies
    • WKB projects
    • Article index
  • Info
    • Contact Us
    • Baking Conversion Tools
    • Why Home Baking
    • Baking Glossary
    • Article Index
    • Bread Scoring with the Lame
    • Send Us Your Loaf
    • Your Loaves!
  • About us
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Best bread recipes / Our other french baguette recipe

Our other french baguette recipe

98 Comments Best bread recipes couche, poolish, stretch&fold, yeast

Less stretching & folding, less wet, less steps, but you do need a mixer for this one…

This method is easier, the recipe has less steps, the dough is less wet than our 80% hydration baguette recipe, and yet this one also yields wonderful baguettes. If you were to compare the two recipes you could say this easy version has a little less depth of flavor and the holes in the crumb are less impressive, but it is also less laborious and less sticky (saves you 2 hours on baking day). The flavors are actually very much comparable and eaten in combination with other foods like cheese it will be hard to notice much difference in taste.

We think this recipe offers a great place to start for the novice baguette baker. Still, it is not at all the easiest of bread recipes to master, but it is one every home baker wants to have as part of his baking repertoire. And we are confident this recipe will also give you very satisfying results.

Baguettes resting in couche
Scoring the baguettes with our lame / bread scoring tool
Baguettes transported onto the hot stones of our Rofco oven
Baguettes ready to be taken out of the stone oven
Freshly baked baguettes anyone?

So lets start baking! But before we do, you may want to check out our baguette video Watch it here…
And our tips for bread scoring with confidence and handling wet dough may also come in handy.
Last but not least do not forget to stop by our baguette log and follow our baguette baking progress and learn from our experiences and mistakes!


This is what the active poolish looks like

Ingredients for the poolish
380 g wheat (bread) flour
380 g cold water (straight from the tap)
0.7 g instant yeast* (we use twice the amount in winter when temps are low!)
Ingredients for the baguettes
1 batch makes 4 baguettes
the poolish from step 1
380 g wheat (bread) flour
190 g water at room temperature
12 g (sea) salt
2 g instant yeast

* In winter our bakery is between 16ºC / 61ºF and 18ºC / 65ºF, so we use more yeast to get the poolish going. In summer the average temperature is between 21ºC / 70ºF and 25ºC / 77 ºF so we can use less yeast to get the same result. So take the temperature of your surroundings into account to determine your amount of yeast.

Making the poolish
In a bowl stir together 380 grams of bread flour with 380 grams of cold water with the yeast (see above). Mix until you have a consistency that looks like dough-like batter. Cover the bowl and leave for 12 hours at room temperature. So if you want to begin your baguette baking in the morning, you can make your poolish the evening before.

Making the baguettes
In the bowl of your standing mixer, combine the poolish with the other ingredients and knead for 6 minutes. Cover and leave to rest for 40 minutes. Now turn out the mass onto your work surface and stretch and fold, doing two to three sets of letter folds (one set = right over left, left over right, bottom over top, top over bottom) depending on how well your dough cooperates. Stop if the dough is not willing to stretch anymore. Put the dough in a greased bowl, cover and again leave to rest for 40 minutes.

The \'Poolish\' for the baguette
Ingredients for the baguette dough
Kneading for 6 minutes
After first stretch and fold
Ready for pre-shape

Turn out the dough and stretch and fold a second time, doing one to two sets of letter folds.
Directly after the stretch and fold, divide the dough in 4 equal parts. Now you are going to pre-shape the dough parts one by one by carefully stretching the corners, making a rectangle of each of the 4 pieces, and rolling them up. Try to make your rectangle and roll as even as possible without fussing too much with the dough. Use enough flour to handle the dough, but try to keep it to a minimum. Cover and leave to rest for 10 minutes so the gluten can relax.

This dough loves to be stretched and folded
A  letter fold means , left over right, right over left, bottom over top, top over bottom
A  letter fold means , left over right, right over left, bottom over top, top over bottom
The result after the stretch and fold

Preheat your oven to 240ºC / 465ºF (at what stage you preheat your oven depends on how long it takes for your oven to heat through, some take 30 minutes, some, like ours, with stone floors take a lot longer, up to two hours.)

Take a roll of the pre-shaped dough and sprinkle it with a little flour and softly press it into a rectangle with a short and a long side. The more even the rectangle the nicer the baguette will look in the end. With a dough scraper make sure the dough is not stuck to your work surface with the help of a little bit of flour.

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces
Weighing might help to get same sized baguettes!
Preshape
Preshaped baguettes resting
Shaping the baguettes
Flip over the edge of the dough and press with palm of your hand to create tension
Flip over the edge of the dough and press with palm of your hand to create tension
Flip over the edge of the dough and press with palm of your hand to create tension
Finally roll the baguette to get to the right length.

With a dough scraper, flip 1/3 of the long side onto itself and press down the seam, with the heel of your hand, to get some tension on the outside of the dough, now repeat it two more times until you have a roll shape. Make a rolling motion with your hands from the center to the sides with a soft touch to make the baguette longer and to try and make nice pointy ends on both sides of the baguette.
This baguette shaping video on the King Arthur Flour website by Jeffrey Hamelman is really worth a closer look if you are in need of more baguette shaping support.

Practice makes perfect, do not be hard on yourself, it is not an easy job, even with this slightly less sticky dough, compared to the 80% hydration we use for our other baguette recipe.

It would be wise to measure the length of your oven floor, so your baguettes will fit. Normally a baguette is about 60 cm / 23.6 inches long. We have to make ours 45 cm / 17.7 inches maximum so they will fit into our oven.

Place the baguettes in a couche / proofing cloth made of linen or in a baguette pan, or something of your own invention, but make sure the baguettes have enough side support to hold their shape. Cover them and leave to proof for 35 minutes.

Baguettes resting in their couches (beds) made of thick proofing linen

To check if the baguettes are ready, dip your finger in some flour and gently poke your dough.

  • If the hole disappears completely: under-proofed
  • If the hole dent pops half way back out: proofing is just right
  • If the hole stays entirely dented in: over-proofed
Use some semolina or rice flour to prepare your board
Baguettes did final proofing in their couches made from linen cloth
Transferring the baguettes with a flipping board
Scoring baguettes takes a bit of practice
Baguettes into the oven directly on the hot stones

Score the top of the baguettes with a lame/bread scoring tool. Cut as straight along the long axis of the loaf as possible. Mentally divide the baguette into lengthwise thirds, and keep the cuts within the middle third. Overlap the cuts by about one third of their length, while holding the knife at a 30 degree angle. Also check out this very useful video on proper baguette scoring.

Do not use this steam generating method with your normal household oven! Check our oven tips first

You can practice the scoring strokes with a pencil on a piece of paper or a kitchen paper roll first.

Bake in the preheated oven for 27 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

To get a nice crust, try to create some steam in your oven by putting a small metal baking tray on your oven floor when you preheat the oven and pouring in half a cup of hot water immediately after putting the bread in the oven. Release some steam by setting your oven door ajar 5 minutes before the bread is ready. If you are going to create steam with a baking tray, you maybe also want to turn your oven temperature a bit higher, because you are going to lose some heat in the process.

You can showcase your baguette baking results in the ‘Your Loaves’ section on our website

Baguette time table
Day 1
Make poolish

Day 2
00:00 Mix ingredients 6 minutes
40 minute rest
00:46 – 2-3 letter folds
40 minute rest
01:26 – 1-2 letter fold + divide + pre-shape
10 minute rest
01:41 – shape + proof
35 minutes final proofing
02:20 – into the oven
Baking time 27 minutes
02:47 – take out and leave to cool

The crumb: the holes are slightly less impressive compared to the 80% hydration recipe, but still very nice texture and taste!

If you are looking for couches / proofing linen for baguettes, we have really good ones made from 100% French bakers linen in our Weekend Bakery web shop!

Best bread recipes couche, poolish, stretch&fold, yeast

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments

  1. Stan says

    January 4, 2019 at 14:10

    I’m trying out this recipe and after doing stretch and fold two times (with a 40 minute interval) my dough is actually too wet to handle. I’ve done some dlour on my hands and the deegschraper, but still I was unable to make nice rectangles. On Youtube I found your baguette baking video in which you stretch and fold for a much longer time than in this recipe. Should I also stretch and fold for 2 minutes and then try pre-shaping my baguette? Thanks in advance!

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      January 7, 2019 at 21:42

      Hello Stan,
      That’s a very good suggestion and that would be our advice. So much is dependent on the flour you use and the amount and type of gluten in it. This determines how much liquid to use and the elasticity and extensibility of the dough. So, it could well be that just a few % less hydration and /or some more S&F would make the dough more ‘cooperative’. This is why we suggest the added ‘depending on how well your dough cooperates and Stop if the dough is not willing to stretch anymore’ to the instructions.
      Also, try a different flour (with around 12% protein or a bit higher) if you still do not like your results.

      Hope this helps and enjoy your baguette baking!

      Reply
  2. Philip says

    September 15, 2018 at 20:15

    Operation succeeded with in the end 66 % moisture. Large ‘alveolles’ as a french trad francaise baguette.
    Super tasting baguette.
    Used your 30° angle suggestion for scoring technique: i still need a lot of practicing after this batch but saw immediate difference from scoring straight 90° instead. Tx!!!

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      September 19, 2018 at 19:13

      Glad to read your latest comment Philip and glad you persevered! Based on your earlier comment we were wondering if your mixing was the culprit, maybe somehow under-developing the dough, not getting enough gluten strength. But practice makes perfect. So glad you like our instructions and they help you perfect your baking and loaves.

      Enjoy your baking and baguette making!

      Ed & Marieke

      Reply
  3. Philip says

    September 15, 2018 at 13:45

    Hi,

    First time i use this recipe. I do not understand why my dough always looks much stickier and lacks strength at the end of mixing. Even when reducing the water to total 66 %. I use 13/680 wheat flour. Package states a moisture perc at around 15 perc. I had this with your recipe but also with other recipes. When above 70 % water dough loses strenght. I had better experience when using 24 h 4 degr C ‘pointage retarde’ but even then when eg looking at french bakery instruction video on youtube they all show a much stronger dough at end of kneading. While all this is is a bit frustrating i manage to bake good tasty baguettes

    Reply
    • Philip says

      September 15, 2018 at 14:07

      Wanted to add still. Your website instructions are really excellent! Thank you for this.

      Reply
  4. Benny says

    August 7, 2018 at 15:40

    Thanks so much for this recipe and the excellent instructions with videos and images. For me this produced a remarkable baguette, better than some I have had in New Orleans, and certainly good enough to wow my friends who come to dine.
    The stretch and fold technique works so well that I have gained new confidence in working with high hydration dough and am going to move next to the 80%. Thanks Again!
    Benny

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      August 13, 2018 at 20:19

      Great work Benny, so glad it worked out well and you are enthusiastic about the recipe and techniques. Always great to learn something new, especially when it yields good results. With this experience the 80% recipe will be a good step to take. Enjoy the baguette baking!

      Marieke & Ed

      Reply
  5. Bonnie says

    June 20, 2018 at 18:46

    This sounds really good…but do you have cup/teaspoon conversions for this recipe ? Anxious to try this…comments are so positive!

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      June 25, 2018 at 19:32

      Hello Bonnie,
      We very much recommend weighing your ingredients. Professional bakers use scales (also in the US) and in Europe almost all home bakers do too. A scale will give you the exact same weight every time. Which is absolutely needed if you consistently want to make good bread, especially good baguettes and pastry. You can get a scale for the same price as a few sacks of good flour and less than a lot of baking tools.
      But we understand not having scales at hand. We do have very handy baking conversion tools and a quick and easy to scan table for conversion of all staple baking ingredients.
      www.weekendbakery.com/cooki…nversions/

      Let us know if you need our help!

      Happy baking

      Reply
  6. Emma says

    April 10, 2018 at 21:25

    I made this the other day, and used the slap and fold technique instead of a machine, and added 15 minutes of autolyse. Despite completely failing the shaping of the baguettes, they came out tasting great with an amazing holey crust. Thank you for this recipe! I will be attempting it again tomorrow.

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      April 13, 2018 at 11:28

      Thanks for your comment Emma. The shaping takes some practice but you will get more comfortable with the stickiness of it when you do it more often!
      And so great with baking bread, even though it is not yet 100% the way you want it, it can still taste absolutely great.

      Happy baguette baking!

      Reply
  7. April J says

    April 2, 2018 at 21:27

    Best French bread recipe. Texture, and taste were fantastic. Great explanation, and the videos explaining technique were really good. This will be my go to French bread recipe. Thanks.

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      April 4, 2018 at 22:09

      Thank you so much for your kind comment April. So glad it worked out well and you are enjoying your own home baked French baguettes.

      Happy baguette baking!

      Marieke & Ed

      Reply
  8. juan servellon says

    March 3, 2018 at 06:27

    look easy

    Reply
  9. Antoine Hanna says

    February 8, 2018 at 20:37

    Did not get the nice holes that you got. What did I do wrong?

    Reply
  10. Antoine Hanna says

    February 8, 2018 at 20:34

    Did not get the nice large number of holes . What did I do wrong ?

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      February 10, 2018 at 18:00

      Hello Antoine,
      It can be one of these things or a combination:
      Fumbling too much with the dough, pressing on the dough too hard or adding too much flour during the process to compensate for the stickiness of the dough.
      Some people oil their work surface and lightly oil their hands during kneading or folding. Some people lightly wet their hands. I prefer to use my hands dry, with maybe a bit of flour. Test different methods and see what works for you.
      Also remember that different types of flour have different levels of moisture absorption. Make sure you have the right type of flour for the recipe or adjust your moisture levels accordingly.

      Reply
      • Antoine Hanna says

        February 11, 2018 at 00:34

        Thanks.

        Reply
  11. Samy says

    January 24, 2018 at 19:04

    Really good explanation
    Great website
    Thank you

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      January 27, 2018 at 11:29

      Thank you Sammy for letting us know and happy baking weekend!

      Reply
« Older Comments

Primary Sidebar

Search

Categories

  • Best bread recipes
  • Bread baking tips
  • Bread movies
  • Featured
  • Nederlandse recepten & tips
  • Sweet baking
  • WKB projects

Info

  • About Us
  • Article Index
  • Baking Conversion Tools
  • Baking Glossary
  • Bread Scoring with the Lame
  • Contact Us
  • Send Us Your Loaf
  • Why Home Baking
  • Your Loaves More 1 !
  • Your Loaves More 2 !
  • Your Loaves More 3 !
  • Your Loaves!

Subscribe to new posting alert


Featured articles

The Panettone Project

A baker’s dozen: Our 12 plus 1 best baking tips!

Cherry and almond cream buns with vanilla glaze

Classic French croissant recipe

Almond and Cranberry filled Speculaas Pies

Sourdough pain naturel

Footer

Recent Articles

  • Marbled mini brioche with raw cacao & pearl sugar
  • Our favorite simple sandwich loaf
  • Common Baking Mistakes – Top 10
  • Video: Baking pizza in our outdoor oven – short clips to inspire you
  • Fluffy ‘overnight’ buns with pumpkin
  • A pizza adventure part III : Who wants pizza for dessert?
  • Ons favoriete sandwichbrood!
  • Super chocolate mini muffins
  • Baking bread: The use of proofing baskets
  • Christmas star bread

Tags

apples banneton boule Bread bread baking tips bread oven bread tips brioche butter cakes cheese chocolate christmas cinnamon Coffee Cookies couche cranberries Croissants Dutch flatbread Holiday baking honey hybrid method Laminated dough muesli muffins no knead pain rustique Patisserie pies & tarts pizza poolish preferment rofco bread oven rye bread scones sourdough stretch&fold stretch & fold vanilla Viennoiserie walnuts whole wheat yeast

WKB on Social Media

  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Favorites

  • De Zandhaas – Our local flour mill
  • Real Bread Campaign
  • The Fresh Loaf
  • The Perfect Loaf

All photos and text Copyright 2005-2019 by weekendbakery.com