Making French Traditional Baguette Bread Online Exhibit with Florence Paget by Ruth Paget
In 1993, the French government decreed that bread that is sold as French traditional baguettes can only contain 4 ingredients in its Décret Pain (93 – 1074): wheat flour, water, salt, and yeast.
My daughter Florence Paget wanted to bake baguettes as a family heritage project, so we bought organic ingredients and she set to work on the following recipe, which I recorded in step-by-step photos and videos below.
Traditional French Baguette Bread Recipe
3 ¼ cup flour
1 ¼ cup warm water
2 ¼ teaspoons yeast (1 package active dry yeast)
2 teaspoons sea salt
Oven temperature: 480 degrees Fahrenheit
Baking time: 20 minutes
Florence first sprinkled yeast on the warm water and mixed it up till it was cloudy and beginning to slightly bubble.
Florence placed all the flour in a mixing bowl and all the water and blended the dough with a mixer while it was liquid. As the water was absorbed by the flour, she then mixed the dough with her hands. This is a sticky operation.
At this point, she made the dough into a ball and covered it and placed it in a cool oven to rise. The time for rising will vary depending on the temperature in the room. Dough rising can take between 1 and 2 hours.
After 2 hours, Florence set out her bread baking pan on the stove and pulled the risen dough out from the oven.
Florence turned on the oven to preheat to 480 degrees Fahrenheit and placed a pan of water on the lower rack of the oven that would steam the bread as it cooked to make a crunchy crust. Next, she floured the kitchen counter for kneading the risen dough. (Note: We have a well-seasoned pizza stone in our oven which also helps keep the oven warm when baking other items.)
As you can see from the photo, the dough has doubled in size. Florence carefully peeled the ball of dough out onto the floured counter to avoid crushing air bubbles in the dough.
She gently kneaded the dough a few times before shaping it into long loaves by cutting the dough in half, shaping it into a rectangle, and rolling up the rectangles into loaves. Do a minimum of dough handling to avoid popping air bubbles.
Florence stretched the dough loaves out and placed them in the baking dish. She then scored them with a knife into diagonal shapes on one loaf and down the center of the bread on the other. She then covered the loaves to let them rise again.
When the stove had preheated and the dough loaves had risen, it was time for them to go in the oven on the rack above the steaming water in the pan on the lower rack.
The bread should be done baking in 20 minutes. It should have the characteristic round patterned bottom as seen in the photo. The thick crust on the bread keeps it fresher for an extra day it seems when you bake baguettes at home.
The photos and videos below will walk through the baguette baking process that Florence Paget used:
Note: French baguette bread hors d’oeuvres serving suggestion follows:
Note: When baguettes become a day old and rather hard, cut them into thick rectangles and use them for dunking in soup.
Note: When baguettes are a day old and become hard, they can be cut into chunks and placed in a food processor to make bread crumbs. You can add the bread crumbs to pasta or on top of casseroles.
Note: Of course, cubes of day old baguette are used in fondue. See my blog below for details:
Bon Appétit!
Photos, Videos, and Text By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of Teff: The Global Flour Game
