French Baguette - How to Make Baguettes at Home - No-Knead French Bread Recipe

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with how to make perfect French baguette at home that's right I've gotten so many food wishes for this over the years and I would always reply to the person you know what you really can't make great French baguette at home and I would list all the reasons like the flour in the water and the steam injected oven but that was before I actually tried it but once I did I realized I was wrong again so I'm gonna show you how to make Parisian Bakery quality baguette in your very own home and I think you're gonna be fairly shocked at just how simple this is so we're gonna start with our French bread dough we're gonna use our famous no-knead method which means we're gonna start off with a very small amount of yeast that's just a quarter teaspoon we're gonna throw that in a mixing bowl along with some room-temperature water we don't need warm water for this I'm gonna give that a little stir but we don't need to let this sit like we usually do we don't need this or even want this to start rising quickly so quick stir I'm also gonna add in some salt and then of course the last ingredient flour and I'm not even using bread flour fists we're just gonna use regular all-purpose flour and we're gonna dump that in and we're gonna take a wooden spoon and we're gonna mix that up and at first you're gonna think wow this is way too wet and then as you continue stirring you're gonna thank man this is way too dry but then that'll pass and you'll realize this is gonna be perfect and as you keep stirring and stirring you're gonna get a super thick super sticky dough that will eventually pull all the flour away from the sides okay so just use your wooden spoon to work that lump of dough against the sides of the bowl and if you measure all the ingredients by weight which I'm gonna insist you do that's exactly what it should look like alright very moist very very very sticky but again it does come together enough to pull away from the sides of the bowl that's kind of important alright once we get to that stage we're gonna stop and then we'll simply wrap this in plastic throw a towel over it that really is mostly for looks and I'm gonna put that inside a turned off oven for 12 to 14 hours or until it doubles in size and if it happens a little sooner that's fine if it takes a little longer that's fine but basically it should resemble this this is what mine look like after 12 hours and then we're gonna take a spatula and kind of knock the air out of this you can see just how sticky and wet and elastic that is I probably should have floured the spatula but it's too late but basically we're just going to knock the air out of that dough by scraping it out and we're gonna do so on to a very well floured work surface so sprinkle a good amount of flour down first we're also gonna want to dust them over the top as well as have our hands very well floured and I keep stressing it but this dough is very sticky and has to stay that way so I just want you to use the minimum amount of flour you need to work with this and all we're gonna do is Pat that down into a rectangle all right the primary reason is to knock all the air out but it also will give us a shape that we can cut into four relatively even sized pieces and of course you could weigh these and get them perfectly even but I can't even pretend to care about stuff like that you think I'm scared of baguettes that aren't all the same size I don't think so so we're gonna divide that up into four pieces to make our loaves but before we start shaping that let's make sure we have our pan ready so I have a half sheet pan with a baking mat on it then I'm gonna dust with the cornmeal so that's prepped and ready for our loaves so let's get shaping and that is going to be extremely easy because all we're gonna do is take one of those pieces of dough and we'll give it a little dusting of flour again we're using the minimum we can get away with and I'm basically just gonna roll it up like that and then I'm simply gonna roll it with my fingers like this starting in the center and kind of rolling and stretching it out towards the ends and in just a few short seconds you're gonna have something that looks like that and that's really all it's necessary now if you have any obvious seams put those underneath but even that's not a big deal because once this Rises it's gonna look awesome and once our dough has been rolled out into a cylinder or something like that we're gonna transfer that onto our baking sheet and if you need to even it out a little bit you can do that here but don't worry too much about it like I said when this rises it's gonna look amazing Plus that a little bit of texture on the surface and those slight inconsistencies in the girth are all gonna add to that authentic French baguette appearance and once those are panned up one little quick optional step I do like to take a damp piece of paper towel and just kind of wipe off the excess cornmeal this is gonna go in a super hot oven like five fifty and that extra stuff could smoke in the oven and then we're gonna give the tops our loaves a generous dusting of flour and then very very very lightly drape this with plastic wrap and then once those are covered we're gonna let those rise for about an hour to an hour and a half or until just about doubled in size and I will admit halfway through I got totally paranoid my plastic was gonna stick so I decided to dust it very generously with flour and I put that back on there and I felt better so once you just flour your plastic wrap begin with but bottom line we're gonna leave those loaves to rise and this is what mine look like when they were done it was kind of chilly in my kitchen that day so this took about an hour and a half oh by the way you've probably noticed I'm just doing two loaves here this recipe makes four small baguettes or two regular-sized ones but since we're mostly this will be the largest pan you can get ahold of we're gonna do it this way so I'm gonna cook two I'll cook the other two later and at this point we are finally ready to bake so we're gonna preheat our oven to 550 or as high as your oven will go and we're also on the bottom rack gonna put a pan of water that's gonna keep the oven nice and humidified which is going to be critical to get that authentic crust so our oven is preheating and it's on to the last official step we have to take a razor and make some slashes in the dough but we're not gonna use a razor we're gonna use scissors it's so much easier so take some scissors hold them straight up and make a 45-degree cut but the only problem with the scissor method is it does leave these little sharp tips which you got to poke down I mean that's one of the first things you learn in bag at school if you're gonna snip you gotta tuck the tip alright so remember that so we're gonna poke those down and I said that was the last step but really this is the last official step before these go in the oven we got to take a spray bottle and we got to give these a nice miss teen make sure the surface of both loaves are covered and by the way keep that spray bottle close to you we're gonna use that again at that point we're gonna place it in our preheated oven and we're gonna bake that at 550 degrees for about 15 minutes or until done but don't go anywhere we got stuff to do after five minutes of baking I want you to quickly open up the oven door and give both loaves a really quick spray quickly close the door back up so that's the first spray about four or five minutes in and then we're gonna do one more spray after about ten minutes and while we do this second spray we're also gonna give the pan a turn just so it cooks nice and evenly and by the way at this point do not worry if it looks ugly it's gonna look a little spotty do not be scared because like four or five minutes later when you pull these out after about 50 minutes total cooking time you're gonna be looking at a couple incredibly gorgeous and absolutely authentic French baguettes and I check those out and I know those look so trade magnifique you want to eat it right away but you can't you have to let this cool put them on a rack until they completely cool do not cut these do not cut these warm but after they're cooled down you're gonna take a serrated knife and you're gonna hear something that sounds like this oh yeah in fact they can say you can tell how good a bag that's gonna taste by the sound I totally agree with that and this did not disappoint it just came out absolutely perfect that thin crispy crusty exterior and the insides very tender very light while at the same time they have that signature chewiness that the baguettes are known for and of course the only way to make this any better or any more French would be to put some butter on it so we're gonna burn that up and continue to enjoy what is truly one of the world's great pleasures in fact this came out so good I'd like to apologize to all the French bakeries we're gonna put out a business when this goes viral sorry guys but you had a good run so I really do hope you give this a try head over to food wishes com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 2,326,921

Rating: 4.9007707 out of 5

Keywords: Baguette (Dish), bread, French Food (Cuisine), no-knead, baking, chef, john, foodwishes, Cooking, Kitchen, Recipe, Restaurant, Recipes, Parisian, authentic

Id: Q2rLPq8oYCc

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/telllos]

I need to try that!

[u/[deleted]]

Here's how to shape baguettes if you actually want them to look decent: http://www.sfbi.com/shaping-baguettes.html

[u/easyjet]

Didn't know Emo Philips was a Baker.

[u/Im_the_Zeppo]

this is my go-to for easy baguettes. may not be the best baguette recipe out there, but it's good in a pinch.

[u/Jiecut]

If you're gonna snip, you gotta tuck the tip.