I LOVE a good French bread! It’s perfect to serve hot AND to enjoy with those delicious Italian meals.
This is my recipe for both baguettes and French bread. Baguettes are part of our #makebread365 challenge we have going on for 2023 over on Instagram!
Be sure to watch video to get a better understanding about how to shape the dough and the texture we are looking for!
Enjoy!
Baguette and French Bread with 100% Freshly Milled Wheat
This two recipes in one! This is my recipe for baguettes and French bread using 100% freshly milled wheat. The difference between the two is how you shape them!
Ingredients
- 2 cups warm water
- 1.5 TB cane sugar honey can also be used
- 5 cups freshly milled hard white wheat mill about 3 1/2 cups of wheat berries. Hard white is recommended, but Kamut can also be used.
- 1 TB instant yeast active yeast can be used, but rising will take longer
- 1 TB oil olive oil is my preference
- 2.5 tsp salt
Instructions
- In a mixer or bowl, combine warm water, sugar, and about 2 1/2 cups of freshly milled flour. Stir together, add yeast. Let sponge for about 15-20 minutes until bubbly (if it never rises slightly or bubbles, your yeast is bad. Toss it out and use new yeast)
- After sponge has formed, add olive oil an salt and 2 cups of freshly milled flour.
- Mix together. When using a mixer, add flour a little bit at a time until the dough starts to pull off the sides of the bowl (see video for details). If mixing by hand, add enough flour where it is still tacky and start kneading. Once it's time to knead, knead in mixer for 9 minutes or by hand for about 15-20 minutes.
- Knead until dough is soft and TACKY. Do not over add flour because it will be too dense (See video for details).
- Once kneading is done, place in greased bowl (or keep in mixer bowl), cover and rise for about 30-45 minutes until doubled.
- Once doubled, dough probably will still be tacky. This is good. Lightly dust surface of counter and place dough on counter. Divide into three even dough balls (baguettes) or two even dough balls (French bread). If necessary, lightly dust your hands if too sticky or dip hands in water.
- With each dough ball, roll out into a rectangle about 10 inches wide and 6-7 inches deep. Don't overthink this, you just want a rectangle.
- Fold over 1/3 of dough into middle and press seam down. Roll over again to the edge and press seam.
- Roll dough into a long shape for a baguette or a longer, but shorter, shape for French bread (see video).
- Place on baguette or French bread pans (or place on a dusted, clean tea towel with places pulled up to create an edge between each loaf).
- Cover and let rise until double.
- While dough is rising, preheat oven to 425 degrees F
- Once bread loaves have doubled (about 30 minutes), score and brush with water or mist with a clean spray bottle. Egg wash can also be used, but it will be more browned.
- Bake at 425 degrees F for 10 minutes. Then reduce oven to 375 degrees F for another 15 minutes or until internal temp is 190 degrees F.
- Place on cooling rack and let rest for about 10 minutes.
- When ready to serve, just break apart of slice with bread knife!
Notes
Hard white wheat works best. If you do not have hard white wheat on hand, you can use 2/3 part hard red wheat and 1/3 part soft white wheat.
If you want a crustier crust, bake about 1-2 minutes little longer at 425 degrees. This all depends on your oven, so experiment!
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Where is the video you referenced in the recipe?
oops! It has been added to the post!
Delicious!! Just tried this tonight with my family, and it was a hit! Thank you for the recipe and great instructions!
Made this recipe with my first Bosch mixer! Turned out perfect. The bread is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.
have you ever refrigerated the dough overnight either before or after shaping the loaves? I want to bake it in the morning but don’t want to get up super early. 🙂
Made this recipe for the 1st time yesterday. Awesome!!! I appreciate the recipe and video. I ordered french bread pans today because I see me making this recipe often. I used a greased cookie sheet and think the french bread would come out even better if I used the correct pan. Thank you, Felicia!!!
This is not french baguette, there is an actual law in France about the baguette recipe. Baguette should not have sugar, nor honey nor oil. Baguette are flour, yeast our sourdough starter, salt and water. That’s why European are not overweight they eat healthy bread everyday not sugar sweet bread.
Bish, this has 1.5 tbsp sugar between 3 loaves. This is not why Americans are fat. Stfu and eat the damn bread.
This is a great recipe! Very successful for me! Rather than use a tea towel, I used a large piece of parchment and rolled up some pieces of aluminum foil to slip between the dough pieces underneath the parchment and then just removed the foil for baking to allow air flow. Worked really well!
It’s was so hard for me to find successful recipes with my fresh ground wheat until I found your site. Things are working out brilliantly. This recipe worked great and was so tasty. I make fresh bread and it makes 2 good sized loaves. Currently I only have hard and soft red wheat. I used 100% hard red and it came out lovely. Thanks for your testing and sharing.
I made these for the first time today and I don’t know what I did wrong. They were almost growing off the sides of the baguette pan, they baked quite flat and never got brown even though I sprayed them with water. Any help before I attempt the recipe again would be greatly appreciated.
I just made this bread and love how it came together. I added a bit of sourdough starter to the batch and carefully adjusted for added liquid. I have leftovers I’d like to use for sandwiches tomorrow but there is no mention if these keep well. Thanks
This is Sue Becker’s recipe.
I tried to make this using the metric measurement of 800 g for flour. After the dough was extremely hard and dry, I looked up the conversion of 800 g to cups. It’s nearly 6.5 cups of flour—almost an entire cup more than called for.
There is a problem with the metric conversion on the recipe card.
I like this better than the normal bread recipe I make. I might just shape this into full size loaves and bake next time!