Rustic Baguettes

Anyone who’s been to France can easily remember the small boulangeries which sell fresh baguettes, they are so fresh that when breaking them you hear the crunch sound of the dough breaking, music to my ears.

The idea is to try and get the hard crust as in the original French baguette while keeping the inside light and soft, it’s not a simple task but can be done if taking under consideration a few factors.

• Baking should be with steam in the first 5 minutes, it will help the outer dough to form into a thick crust.
• Temperature of the oven should be very high, minimum of 250°c/ 500°F, we are looking for a fast baking, after all, this is a pretty thin bread.
• Slowing down the yeast action will generate a much easier to handle dough while keeping all the precious air bubbles.

The real problem (except texture) of baguettes in local bakeries outside France is the flavor, the local baguettes usually taste like a regular white bread with a baguette shape, not cool at all.

In this recipe, we will make some nice moves to reach the mature rustic baguettes flavor we are looking for in all of our breads. In other words, we will make a few baking tricks like using a mix of white and whole wheat flour, adding a bit of our delicious rye culture to the dough (this is optional, you can do without a sourdough culture but using it will certainly upgrade your bread) and last thing will be, leaving the dough for about 48hrs in a cold environment (fridge for example) for flavor build up.

After trying this recipe you will not be able to go back to local baguettes, this bread is just so good it’s addictive, don’t say we didn’t warn you!