Ginger Free Crusty French Baguette
Few things in the kitchen feel as satisfying as pulling a deeply golden, crackling baguette from your own oven. This recipe relies on just four ingredients — bread flour, sea salt, instant yeast, and water — so there is absolutely nothing hidden in the mix, making it a genuinely clean bake for anyone avoiding certain roots and spices. The magic here is time: a long, slow cold ferment in the refrigerator builds complex flavor that you simply cannot rush, and a series of gentle stretch-and-folds develops the gluten into that signature chewy, open crumb. Scoring the loaves with confident diagonal slashes before they go in lets the crust bloom dramatically in the oven's intense heat, and the steam trick with the lower baking sheet is what gives you that audible, shattering crust you usually only find at a good bakery. Waiting the full twenty minutes before slicing is genuinely the hardest part, but the crumb needs that time to finish setting. Serve it with good butter, tear it alongside soup, or use it as the base for the best sandwich of your week.
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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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