Easy Artisan French Baguette Recipe

This Paul Hollywood-inspired Easy Artisan French Baguette Recipe is made with bread flour, salt, yeast and water. Ready in three hours or less.

Paul Hollywood-Inspired Easy Artisan French Baguette Recipe

When you desire a bakery shop-quality baguette but but not sure how to start, give this quick and Easy Artisan French Baguette Recipe a try. It’s based upon Paul Hollywood’s own tried and true recipe and is remarkably simple to do, even for a wannabe beginner bread baker like me.

You’ve probably seen me reference elsewhere on Wisconsin Homemaker, that necessity is the mother of invention and this recipe is no different.

It came as a result of my local grocer running out of baguettes—of any kind—like really, go figure—and here I was making a pasta dish that needed such a baguette to finish the meal.

So what to do? Serendipitously, I had been researching recipes for baking other types of bread after mastering this Homemade Bread Recipe. Even so, I still didn’t feel sufficiently confident that I could pull off dinner rolls, ciabatta, and baguettes.

Thus, Paul Hollywood. He and Mary Berry shared their tips and secrets and recipes showcased on the Great British Baking Show, as well as through their Master Classes.

And, it was from this venue I came to understand more fully the baking concepts that I needed to employ in order to make great bread (and pastry)—no matter what kind.

So I took it in hand and decided to try out a version of Paul’s recipe and to see if it would work for this Midwestern gal.

If this recipe has inspired you to bake more bread, be sure to check out Paul Hollywood’s excellent How to Bake Bread Cookbook.

How to Make a French Baguette

To Make:

As mentioned above, this recipe requires few ingredients including, bread flour, yeast, water, salt and olive oil.

For this recipe, it’s best if you weigh all ingredients for better results using a food scale.

RELATED: Bread Making Tips for Beginners

Machine vs. Hand Kneading

To mix everything together, I used a stand mixer with a dough hook. The time for kneading was approximately 5-7 minutes.

If you were to translate that into hand kneading, you’d be looking at least 10+ minutes of kneading to get the same results.

DID YOU KNOW? Day-old bread can be sliced and toasted for bruschetta, dipping, dried for bread crumbs or made into Tuscan-Style Panzanella Salad.

Square Container vs. Round Bowl

Paul Holliday highly suggests using a square container, since it makes it easier to cut off long strands of dough that will be formed into baguettes.

Using a round bowl, however, you will find yourself overworking the dough, which may in turn make the baguette loaves less light and crusty as you might expect.

RELATED: Bread Baking Tools for Your Home

First Rise Improvise

Right from the start I had to make some tweaks. Since my house is air conditioned during the summer, it is way too cool for rising bread. So I had to come up with a solution and improvise to create a pseudo warm environment ripe for bread rising and proofing.

I had tried out using my oven. I tried adding hot water to a pan and letting my bread rise, as well as preheating it for a minute or so and turning it off. I also tried using the “Microwave Technique” but that, too, became an utter fail.

If your kitchen is warm enough, you can rise your bread dough on a counter, by covering the container with a tea towel. Rise time: 1 hour.

My bread tasted okay using the oven and microwave, but the rise on the dough needed more to be desired. So back to the drawing board.

Then I read about using one’s dryer for rising dough. I grabbed my machine’s shoe dryer rack, which came with the dryer when I bought it.

I thought this would be an excellent way to keep the dough container off the heated drum and allow the dough to rise naturally.

So while the dough was being kneaded by my KitchenAid stand mixer, I heated the dryer on “normal” and “warm” for a minute or so then turned it off. It was ready for the dough.

Note: If you don’t have this item, you could use a shoe box or some other container to place in your dryer once it has warmed up to place the dough container on top of that.

I placed the dough in a rectangular Tupperware container that had been well-greased with olive oil and topped it with a tea towel.

Then, the dough was left to rise in the dryer for one hour.

Prepare Baking Sheets

While the bread is rising, you will need to prepare your baking sheets with a Silpat or a combination of an olive oil base, topped with a sheet of baking parchment paper.

As an FYI, you will be using these baking sheets for the final proof, as well as baking the baguettes in the oven, so keep that in mind.

Cut the Dough

Once the dough has been released from the container, it was time to cut the dough into equal portions. You can use a knife for this task…

…Or better still a pastry cutter, which does the trick nicely.

Roll the Dough

If you think of how an Artisan French Baguette looks like, it’s long and thin. To get the dough to conform to this shape you need to roll the dough.

The rolling process is just that, a gentle back and forth motion to get the dough to form in long “tube” like rolls.

Some fine bakers lift the sides into the center of the loaf and then do it from the opposite side. What you create is a “seam” running down the middle of the loaf that will be placed face down .

But even more important, the idea isn’t to press down on the rolls, as much as it is to form it into even lengths that will fit on your baking sheets.

And, speaking of baking sheets, you’ll notice that the baguettes are placed on a diagonal, since they are much too long for the baking sheet itself, so by putting them thusly, they fit nicely.

Cooking Tip: For this baguette recipe, you could also use a linen couche to help shape the loaves. Here’s a quick video tutorial how to use one.

Or, you can use a Perforated Non-stick Baguette Pan made to proof (with a layer of parchment paper) and bake at the same time.

Final Proof

The final proof of the dough should be done at room temperature for approximately one hour.

Then, cut slices using a knife or bread lame, on the diagonal, 3-4 times down each loaf followed by a light dusting of flour.

Place baking sheets in a preheated 430 degree F oven to bake–middle rack.

Use Steam

The secret to crusty artisan French baguettes is not only proofing it properly but also adding steam in the oven.

From the image below, you probably can’t see the roaster on the bottom rack, but it’s there with boiling water that had been added to it just prior to adding the loaves to bake.

This is an important step, as baguettes need a moist environment in order to create that crusty outer crust and soft yummy inner crumb.

Bake Loaves

Allow the baguette loaves to bake for approximately 25 minutes until golden brown. Then remove them from the oven and cool on a rack.

Final Baguette Tips

Baguettes are only good on the day they are baked. So if you have extra loaves, wrap them in aluminum foil or freeze in a plastic bag.

To re-crisp the loaves the next day, you can dip the loaves in cool water and bake in a preheated 450 degree F oven for approximately 10 minutes.

You can also slice the loaves and toast the rounds in the oven and use for bruschetta, for dipping, or use in this delicious Tuscan-style Panzanella Salad Recipe.

For delicious bread sticks, roll your dough into thin sticks and bake for approximately 15-20 minutes.

For submarine sandwiches, use shorter, wider loaves and bake for approximately the same amount of time.

For more delicious bread recipes, like this Easy Artisan French Baguette Recipe, along with helpful tips and ideas, be sure to check out Wisconsin Homemaker’s Cooking Section.