Nutmeg Free Crusty French Baguette
Four ingredients. That's genuinely all it takes to pull a crackling, golden baguette out of your own oven — bread flour, sea salt, instant yeast, and cool water. The magic here is time and technique: a long, cold ferment overnight builds the kind of deep, wheaty flavor that most bakeries spend years perfecting. Stretch-and-fold sets replace the need for heavy kneading, and a blast of steam in a screaming-hot oven gives you that signature shatter-crisp crust with a chewy, open crumb underneath. Because the ingredient list is so stripped down, there's zero guesswork about hidden spices or warm-spice blends sneaking in — what you see is exactly what you get. Scoring the dough at a shallow angle right before it hits the stone is the move that lets the loaf bloom dramatically in the oven, so don't skip it. Cool the finished baguettes on a wire rack for at least twenty minutes and you'll be rewarded with a crumb that slices cleanly instead of squishing flat. Tear off a hunk while it's still slightly warm and you'll understand why people build entire meals around a great loaf of bread.
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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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