Gelatin Free Crusty French Baguette
Few things in the kitchen feel as satisfying as pulling a deeply golden, crackling baguette out of your own oven. This recipe builds serious flavor through a long, slow cold ferment, and the stretch-and-fold technique develops structure without any heavy kneading. The ingredient list is beautifully stripped back — just bread flour, sea salt, instant yeast, and water — so there is absolutely nothing hidden to worry about, no additives, no stabilizers, nothing derived from animal byproducts. That simplicity is exactly what makes it work so well for anyone avoiding gelatin or other animal-based ingredients that sometimes sneak into commercial breads. Steam from a pan of hot water in the oven creates that signature shatteringly crisp crust, while the interior stays open and chewy. Scoring the dough at a shallow angle right before it goes in gives each loaf those beautiful diagonal ears that make it look like it came straight from a Parisian boulangerie. Let them cool on a wire rack before slicing — it is genuinely worth the wait.
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Learn more →Ingredients
8 servings
- 3 cups (360g) bread flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 ¼ tsp fine sea salt
- ½ tsp instant yeast
- 1 ¼ cups (295ml) cool water (about 65°f/18°c)
Instructions
- 1
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the bread flour, salt, and instant yeast. Pour in the cool water and stir with a wooden spoon or your hand until no dry flour remains and a shaggy dough forms. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- 2
With damp hands, perform a series of stretch-and-folds: grab one side of the dough, stretch it upward until it resists, then fold it over the center. Rotate the bowl 90 degrees and repeat three more times for a total of 4 folds. Cover and repeat this process two more times at 30-minute intervals (3 sets total). After the final fold, the dough should feel noticeably smoother and hold its shape briefly when released.
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