Shellfish Free Crusty French Baguette
Few things in the kitchen feel as rewarding as pulling a pair of deeply golden, crackling baguettes from your own oven. This recipe relies on just four ingredients — bread flour, sea salt, instant yeast, and cool water — so there is absolutely nothing hidden in the mix, making it a completely safe and straightforward bake for anyone avoiding shellfish or navigating ingredient labels at the store. The magic here is time: a long, slow cold ferment in the refrigerator builds the kind of complex, slightly tangy flavor that most bakery loaves spend years perfecting. A series of simple stretch-and-fold techniques develops the gluten without any heavy kneading, giving you that open, chewy crumb and the signature blistered crust. Scoring the dough at a shallow angle right before it hits the screaming-hot oven lets each baguette bloom dramatically, and the burst of steam in the first ten minutes of baking locks in that shattering, paper-thin exterior. The result is a loaf that sounds hollow when you tap it, reads 205°F at the center, and fills your kitchen with a smell that is genuinely hard to beat. Slice it warm with good butter, tear it alongside soup, or use it as the base for something more elaborate — it holds up beautifully either way.
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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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