The Bakery · Bread
Baguette de Tradition
- Advanced
- 4 h 40 m
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with ferment tang with real depth behind it.
Ingredients
- 500g French T65 or all-purpose flour
- 350ml cool water; 3g yeast, almost nothing; time is the yeast
- 10g salt
- A poolish head start: 150g of the flour + 150ml water + pinch of yeast, fermented overnight
- A baking steel or upturned tray + a pan for steam
Equipment
Sheet pan · Pizza steel
The skills inside
FermentationSteaming: basket, leaf and lidProofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix the overnight poolish with everything else; knead briefly; bulk 2 h with two folds. 120 min
- Divide in 3; rest 20 min; shape logs, then roll to length with open palms, tapering the tips (the pointage is a signature). 20 min
- Proof seam-up in a floured couche or towel folds, 45 min. 45 min
- Flip, score 3–5 overlapping slashes at a shallow ANGLE; bake at 250°C with a cup of water thrown in the steam pan, 22–25 min to deep gold. 25 min
How it should come out
- Three to five slashes have each raised a distinct ear, overlapping by about a third, so they read as one continuous seam down the loaf rather than a ladder of separate rungs.
- The crust is thin and russet-gold with a faint sheen rather than a matte, floury dullness; the loaf crackles audibly on the rack as it cools, and squeezed it cracks and sheds shards onto the board.
- The body is straight and even in diameter with tapered points, and the underside seam is closed, no blowout on the flank or the base.
- Each loaf weighs roughly 230–250g baked and feels light for its size; a heavy loaf for its length means it went in underproofed or came out short of colour.
- The crumb is cream rather than white, irregular, with glossy hole walls. A cottony, chalk-white crumb means the poolish or the bulk was cut short.
Where it goes wrong The log is rolled out to length before any tension has been built into the shape: the seam never seals and the skin stays slack, so the loaf spreads on the couche, and in the oven it blows open along the bottom or one flank instead of at the scores.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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