Homemade french baguette - recipe

Homemade bread is the best, in my opinion. And while woking from home in the past few months, I've baked a lot of bread. Is there anything better than a crunchy french baguette still slightly warmed from the oven?

Want to make them too?


Here are the ingredients (for three small baguettes or two larger ones):

• 400 grams of wheat flour
• 280 ml of water
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 2 teaspoons of dry yeast  

Mix all dry ingredients first. 

Then add the water and, using your hands, mix everything together until you have a uniform ball of dough. 

Cover and let it rise for about 3 hours, lightly kneading the dough every half hour or so. 

Divide the dough into two or three portions, depending on the number of baguettes you want to make (you will want to do this in a flat surface covered with flour, otherwise the dough will stick).

Let the dough portions rest for another 10-15 minutes (they will rise a bit more during that period) and then knead them into baguette shapes:

Using a sharp knife, make diagonal cuts in the baguettes. This is optional but will give them the "French look":

Warm up the oven to 200ºC. Sprinkle the baguettes with water to increase their crustiness and bake them for about 20 minutes:

Remove from the oven and let them cool over a rack - if you notice that I already sliced a bit off one of them in this photo, I was just making sure they were OK :)

My preference is to eat them still slightly warm, but they will remain crunchy for a couple of days anyway (although they never last that long at our house...).

Enjoy!