The Easiest No Knead Baguette Recipe

Hi Bold Bakers, I'm Chef Gemma Stafford and this week on Bigger Bolder Baking we are making these incredible no-knead baguettes from scratch at home. Here's how to do it. So as a professional chef, baguettes were something I really wanted to master, to make perfect before I bought you the recipe, because there are so many baguette recipes out there online and I wanted to make sure that mine gave you the best results, they were easy technique and were easy to achieve, if you wanted to make it every single day you could do that. I have to say I am thrilled, after around two months of testing recipes and technique, I'm delighted with where I've landed, I think the results are amazing and I know you guys are going to be thrilled and you've been waiting for this recipe, so here it is. We're going to start out in a nice big bowl, now let me tell you a few things about these ingredients. Bread flour. Bread flour is what I want you to use, okay, I want everybody out there to agree with me, you're all using bread flour, I don't want you to use all purpose flour, I'll tell you why. The gluten, the protein is just not high enough, I want a 13%, 11% protein in your flour and that's what bread flour gives you. This will yield you a stronger dough, which will hold more gas, will give you bigger bubbles and it also will give you a chew to your baguette, if you use all purpose flour, you're not going to get that chew and your dough will be weaker, so please invest in a bag of bread flour. Now, you know doughs need a few things to survive, what they like is salt, now I bumped up the salt in this recipe a little bit to really give these baguettes flavor and I have to say I think it does wonders. So a little bit of salt in there, now sugar, yeast loves sugar, yeast needs food to live, sugar is that food, so we're going to add a little bit of that in here, it thrives when it gets its hands on that sugar. Now yeast, for those of you who've been following me for a long time, you know I use instant yeast that goes straight into your dry ingredients, if you use active yeast, which has to be sponged, I will put a note on my website of how you can do that, it's no problem. This is instant yeast, straight in there, now often people ask, that's a tiny amount of yeast, it's a quarter of a teaspoon, and that's right, but the reason it is is because this is a fermented dough, so it's going to actually create its own yeast from the air over time, so that's the beauty of these doughs. So now one of my rules of thumb is always put your salt on one side of the bowl, and your yeast on the other side, mix them in separately, and then all together is totally fine. But just keep them separate to start. Now, liquid, or water, now the thing about water is that I need it to be lukewarm, you know a little bit more than room temperature, what I like to say blood temperature, and what I mean by that is this, heat up your water a little bit in the microwave or on the stovetop, put your finger in, if you can't feel the water around your finger, that means it's a very similar temperature to your own blood, which makes it perfect for yeast to grow and to thrive. You don't want it too hot, it'll kill the yeast, you don't want it too cold or it'll slow down your proofing process, so just get it just right. And then with a spatula, we're going to mix this together. So for a no-knead dough, you mix it all by hand using a wooden spoon or a spatula, it could not be simpler, you do not use a machine to bring this dough together. When you use a machine to mix a dough, you're developing the gluten, you need to really like beat the dough, here's what we're going to do. I'm just going to go in with my hand and just grab those last little bits of dry dough. We're going to cover up our dough and let it ferment overnight. While it's fermenting, it develops texture, it develops flavor, it develops gases, and that will actually strengthen your dough, so rather than putting it on a KitchenAid to beat it, time is going to ferment your dough, it's going to help develop that gluten. So what we're going to do is leave this out at room temperature for a minimum of 12 hours, okay? I like to go a maximum of 18. The longer you go, the better the flavor, the better the texture, it's just going to be such a nicer dough to work with and it's going to yield you amazing baguettes. So I'm just going to set this over to the side and let it do its thing. So here you go, I have a dough that I fermented yesterday, it has been 18 hours. Now look at this. This is what 18 hours looks like. Number one, it smells kind of boozy, which is exactly what you want, that is not bad, that is good, that is flavor, that is deliciousness. Now watch this, do you see those gluten strands? We created this overnight by fermenting our dough. So here's now what I want you to do. We want to knock out the air in our dough, so what I like to do at this point is just give it a little quick fold over, so in the bowl, I just grab the sides, like four sides or so, just fold it over in the middle. What I'm doing here is knocking out the air, number one, yes, but I'm also doing some folds in the dough, which strengthens it and helps to create really good structure. This is not a technique that everybody does. I decided to do this because I found it really does make a difference to the end results. So just give it a little fold over on itself, just as much as you can, and knock out that dough. Now I remember when I was a beginner baker, when I was literally 11 years old, and bread baking, and I thought by knocking the air out of your dough, got rid of all the air, and got rid of all those lovely bubbles, but the thing about it is, it's not actually true, it's the opposite. If you don't knock out that air and knock out all those bubbles, your dough will not be as strong. By knocking out the air, it actually gets stronger, and when your dough is stronger, it can capture gases better. So there's a method to my madness. Okay here we go, one piece of dough, and just an FYI, this is a really lovely dough to work with. Put a small bit of flour on your surface, not too much, and all we're gonna do is divvy this up in two. All we want to do now is create a good shape, we'll make it easier for us to shape them later. So bring this side in, like this, bring the side in just towards the center, like this, bring the top down into the center, like that, bring the bottom up to meet the center, just like that. Now, turn it over, seam side down, let's get a little bit more flour for me to work with. Seam side down, look at that, we already have a perfect, lovely little rectangle of dough to later on be able to shape, it makes life so much easier. So I'm gonna pop that there, I'm gonna go again, here we go, you ready? One side into the center, the other side into the center, the top, fold that into the middle also, fold the bottom into the center, just like that. Turn it over, as doughs sit and rest, they get wetter, so you will want a little bit of flour on your countertop as it rests. Now, there we go, cover it up in cling wrap, just make sure they're nicely covered over, the one thing that dough doesn't like is air directly at it, so we want to cover it over so it doesn't form a skin, if it forms a skin it can be very hard to work with later and hard to shape. Get a nice clean tea towel, lay that over it, make them nice and snug, now what we're gonna do is let them sit here for around 45 minutes to an hour, we're gonna come back and we're gonna shape them. So here we are an hour later, I have a few things ready, I have a tray here, a flat tray, I find it easier to use, a clean tea towel please, and I'm gonna dust this generously with some flour. You want to do it generously because when your dough proofs and relaxes, it gets wetter, we want to make sure that it doesn't stick to our tea towel. Lovely, now let's check on our dough, now come here to me I want you to see this. This has been an hour in my kitchen. See the way it's pulling there a little bit? That means that the proof is probably finished, if it's really sticking, that means that it's over proofed or there's a lot of humidity in your area which can be really tough when you're working with a dough like this. If you live in a particularly hot or humid climate, maybe you need less proofing time so just keep an eye on it. You can tell when it's finished proofing by doing this, push it with your finger, you see the way the indentation stays there and it doesn't immediately pop back out? That means that it's ready. So I'm gonna get a little bit of flour on my surface, please do not use too much flour, just a little bit. This is the scary part for me, how do you shape a baguette and make it look like a normal baguette and not something like a snake that swallowed an apple? So here's what you do. This is the best technique that I've seen. What we're going to do is take the top, see this bit here? We are going to fold this into the middle, just like what we did with that initial shaping. Your dough's a little bit wet, get some flour on your fingers. Take this bottom, up into the middle, just like we did before, pressing it in with your fingers to kind of seal it just like that. Now our last step, take this top down to meet this line. So with my fingers I'm going to turn it over, and at this stage you will see bubbles in your dough. Do you see this? Look at all these. Gorgeous. We created that. Oh I'm so excited. Look at these bubbles just popping out of the dough. Now turn it over, look what we have here. Seam up. I want you to pinch this seam, okay, to make it hold its shape, just like this. If you see any bubbles popping out of your dough really bad, just give them a little pop and pinch them, because we don't want those to bake up weird. We're going to roll this out with our hands to around 14 inches, not too long. Go from the center out to the sides, go easy on all those lovely bubbles, just do it gently, and then once you get to the end, taper off, put more pressure, and get those bits on the end. Do you see that? Now the reason I say very little flour is because it can make it hard to roll if there's too much flour on your countertop, so please go easy on the flour. Take your baguette gently, seam side up just like this, onto our dusted tea towel. Make a nice little cozy wall for it there. And this is going to help it proof and hold its shape while it's proofing. Ok, our rectangle. The top, down to the center. The bottom part, bring it up to meet that center. Here we go again, the last bit, we're taking this top, bringing it down to the bottom. Turn it facing up, just pinch that seam, turn it over, give it a little roll, you know around 14 inches, and then taper off at the end, get those lovely points. Upside down, seam facing us, we're going to create a nice little bed for it in here. I'm going to take my piece of cling wrap, we still don't want to get air directly on our dough, cover it up, cover that up with another tea towel. So this is our last proofing, what we're going to do is let these sit here at room temperature for around an hour, then we're going to score them and get them in straight away to a nice hot oven. So around 20-25 minutes before your baguettes are done proofing, stick on your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, 225 degrees Celsius, and preheat it. For these baguettes, we want to get it really lovely and hot, so once they're done they go straight in there. So it's been an hour, let's just check on them, they've risen a lot, and then when I press them, my indentation stays there, it doesn't spring back straight away, if it springs back, cover them, give them more time. But these for me are ready to go, so here's what I'm going to do, we're going to roll it over, here I have my tray, gently pick up your baguette, bring it over here, as you're putting it down, just pull it, give it a little pull. The reason we do this, we want to lengthen it to around 16-17 inches, but also we want to elongate those bubbles in the middle. And then also give it a little straighten, give both of these a little straighten, don't be afraid of the dough. I have a blade here, you can use a serrated knife, just make sure it's sharp, I want you to do swift motions, okay, and I want you to do them on an angle. You do them on an angle because when the bread opens and bakes, on the angle it will open up and they'll be all aligned and it'll be straight down the middle of the dough. If you do them straight down the dough in a line like that, they'll end up being lopsided and over to the side and it just looks weird. So go in on an angle with the blade and then once it bakes, it will open up beautifully. Lovely, my oven is preheated, let's get them in there. On the top shelf, in you go, really hot oven. Beautiful. All we have to do now is wait. Bake them at 450 degrees for roughly 20-25 minutes, no more time than that. What will happen is they'll puff up a lot, way bigger, and they'll also have a lovely crust on the outside. So set your timer because we're almost there. These look gorgeous, they're beautiful golden brown. So check this out, look at the lovely color, do you see how much they rose? More than double the size of the raw dough. Ok, I have a cooled down loaf here so I'm gonna cut it open and let you see what it looks like on the inside. You know what that is? That is our proofing, that is our resting, that is our 18 hours fermenting, all of those bubbles are from those stages. Look at that, they're deep pockets, absolutely gorgeous. See that chew and that tear? That's what makes a good baguette. All of this butter just hiding in those bubbles. Freshly baked bread is one of the most wonderful things you can ever eat and the fact that these are homemade makes it even better. I really hope you try this recipe, I have loads more no-knead doughs, other bread doughs, stick around, check them out, and I'll see you back here again really soon.