In fact, they were so common that I realized that they couldn't be all that complicated if so many places were making them, and therefore I should be able to make them at home. Yet every home baguette recipe I had tried was unimpressive. Some were impractically complex, like the recipe in The Bread Bible that calls for pâte fermentée and a poolish, not to mention autolyzing and countless turns and rises. So I did some more research and came across this blog posting on thefreshloaf.com:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8066/great-baguette-quest-n°3-anis-bouabsa
Here was an actual recipe in use by a top Paris bakery, and it was dirt simple. Now I was on to something. I was immediately successful with this recipe, and over time it has proven to be extremely reliable and adaptable to different flours.
Flour
Before I get to the recipe, I must talk about flour. I want to keep this recipe accessible for non-bread nerds, but you must understand that bread is basically just cooked flour. Everything else is there so just bring it together and enhance the flour's flavour, but your bread will only taste as good as your flour allows.
For my baguettes, I use equal parts President's Choice organic all-purpose white flour, and the white flour from Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg, Ontario. The Upper Canada Village flour is incredible flour. It is stone ground in a water powered mill, and is unlike any other white flour I have ever used. When I don't have this around, I stick with the PC organic all-purpose and substitute in about 1/2 cup of spelt flour. I have also played around with as much as 50% whole wheat flour (I find especially with whole wheat flour, quality is critical), although your baguettes will be denser. Rye and kamut flours are good too, but I would say you will need at least half the flour to be white.
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
3 3/4 cups flour (see above)
1/2 teaspoon yeast (that's right, not much)
Method
Combine all ingredients. I suggest doing it with a stand mixer and dough-hook, or using a bread machine. Kneed for about 10 minutes. The dough should be quite wet, although still cohesive. Let the dough rise one hour, knocking the dough down at the 20 and 40 minute marks.
If you have the Zojirushi bread maker, you can program it to do this part for you. That's means you just have to dump the ingredients in and start your program, and come back when it's done in a little over an hour.
Transfer for the dough to the fridge. Let it stay there overnight. It will rise a bit in the fridge.
The next day, take the dough out of the fridge and transfer it to a floured surface. How many loaves you make will depend on the size of your pizza stone. The wider it is, the longer the loaves can be, so the fewer loaves you will make. For a standard round pizza stone, you will need to split the dough in four. Form the dough into balls, cover and wait an hour.
Now it's time to shape them. GENTLY stretch each dough ball into a rectangle, then roll each long edge of the rectangle inwards and pinch the seems together, GENTLY. Then GENTLY stretch the log out to the desired length. Place the shaped loaves on a piece of parchment paper. Or if you have baguette pans, line them with parchment and place the loaves on there (this will make them more cylindrical, but note that most Parisian baguettes aren't perfectly cylindrical).
Cover, and wait another hour.
Preheat the over to 500 degrees F with the pizza stone in it, and boil a kettle of water. Place some kind of pan on the lower shelf of the over, below your pizza stone.
GENTLY slash your loaves. I find a sharp serrated knife like a bread knife is best for this. Pour the kettle of boiling water into the pan at th bottom of the over, then slide your loaves in. Then with a spray bottle, aggressively mist the inside of your oven. Mist every 5 minute. If you had your loaves on parchment when you slid them into the oven, pull the parchment away after about 10 minutes of baking. The loaves will be ready in 20-25 minute. Go by colour, they should be a deep golden brown. Let cool a bit, but eat them soon!
