Baguette Recipe

The baguette is the whole argument for baker's percentage in one loaf: four ingredients — flour, water, salt, yeast — and everything that makes it special comes from ratio and technique rather than a long shopping list. Done right you get a crackly, deeply colored crust that shatters when you squeeze it, an open and slightly translucent crumb, and a flavor that tastes like more than its four ingredients should allow.

The default sits at 68% hydration with just 0.5% yeast. The low yeast is the important part: a baguette gets its flavor from time, not from a fast aggressive rise, so the dough ferments slowly and develops the nutty, faintly sweet character of well-fermented wheat. Salt holds at the usual 2%. At 68% the dough is wet enough for an open crumb but still shapeable by hand, which is why it is the middle ground between the two classic approaches.

Those approaches are the two variants here. The overnight poolish version (a Forkish-style pre-ferment built the night before) runs wetter, around 75%, and trades a day of waiting for the deepest flavor and the most open crumb. The same-day direct dough runs closer to 65% and skips the pre-ferment for a baguette you can make in an afternoon — less complex, still excellent.

Shaping and scoring are what move this from intermediate to genuinely hard. The dough is slack, the shaping wants a confident gentle hand to keep the gas in, and the cut has to be made fast at a shallow angle to open into an ear. Steam in the first half of the bake sets the crust and the spring. None of it is mysterious, but all of it rewards practice.