Simple Homestyle Sourdough Baguettes
- Total Time
- 18 hours
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
Yield:Two baguettes
- ½cup sourdough (see recipe)
- 1cup water
- ½cup whole-wheat flour
- 3 to 3½cups unbleached bread flour, plus flour for the work surface
- 2teaspoons salt
- Cornmeal for baking sheets
Preparation
- Step 1
Combine the sourdough with the water and allow to sit until the sourdough relaxes and begins to dissolve, about 20 minutes. Beat in the whole-wheat flour and one cup of the bread flour, cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow to rise until very bubbly and light, six to eight hours depending on the warmth of the room.
- Step 2
Beat in the salt and another cup of flour, again cover and let rise until double in size, five to seven hours.
- Step 3
Transfer the mixture to a kneading bowl or food processor fitted with a eel blade and knead in the remaining flour, a third of a cup at a time, until the dough is smooth, shiny and elastic. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Step 4
Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal. Divide the dough in half and roll each half into a thin snake about one-and-a-half inches in diameter. Place the snakes, well separated, on the baking sheet, cover lightly with a dampened tea towel or plastic wrap and allow to rise until double in size, about one to one-and-a-half hours.
- Step 5
Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Make several shallow diagonal slashes across the loaves with a razor blade and put the sheet in the oven. Being careful not to get burned by the steam, throw about a quarter cup of water onto the oven floor and shut the oven at once.
- Step 6
Bake the bread for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the baguettes are crusty and well browned. Cool on wire racks.
Private Notes
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Cooking Notes
Bubikon
A nice recipe and the whole wheat is a good touch. Mine were done in about 35 minutes. It is not easy to get sourdough to rise especially with a baguette as the shape is not as conducive as a boule. However, this works very well if you take the time. In step two if you go way over 7 hours (like overnight) it most likely won't matter.
jeffrey bryan
what is an eel blade ?
Eve
This recipe didn't work for me. The baguettes had a very thick crust and we're too dense inside.
Shortcut
This is a truly excellent recipe that’s worked well for me a number of times now. I get the best results with very active, well fed starter (not surprisingly). My guess is that those who felt this recipe failed had two problems—1) Insufficient rises, especially the second. With no other leavener other than the starter it’s really unpredictable. I had to use longer timing for all 3 rises. 2) this is *NOT* a sourdough discard recipe. Use a well fed, mature starter.
Laura Martin
HELP !!I I got 2 stones. The dough truned out terriby dry and hard, It lacked lots of water. Just 1 cup of water and almost 4 cups of flour -3 1/2 bread or all purpose flour and 1/2 whole wheat- I thought it was strange. Is it supposed to be such a hard dough I have my own souer dough starter and it is quite liquid, so that was not the problem. Please let me know if the ingredient measurments, scpecially water, are correct
KM
Hi Laura-- I bake this weekly and have never used all of the flour in step 3. I use a 1/3 of a cup to cover my kneading surface, and maybe incorporate another 1/6 of a cup of flour halfway through kneading. Hope that helps!
Anna
Although I often make bread, I hadn't made sourdough starter in about 30 years, and decided to get on the current bandwagon. This is the first recipe I tried with my new dough. I added a little more wheat flour.. I have tested my oven temp so it's accurate, and at 35 minutes the tops were almost burnt. I took them out, and before waiting for them to cool, cut a couple of slices. The burnt top didn't matter. Perfect sour, crisp crust, cloud of crust w/slightly large crumb. Yum.
Christine
Any chance you could provide the metric equivalents? So much easier to weigh than measure.....
IndiaBabyBella
Crunch on the outside, soft on the inside. Great way to use sourdough discard. And not too hard for a novice.
KM
I made the starter for another reason, but was elated to find this related recipe for using (rather than discarding) the sourdough/starter/mother dough when it needs to be fed. After looking at the notes, I allowed step 2 to go overnight at room temp (approx doubling the allotted time) and did a 4 hour cold fermenting step for 4, allowing it to come to room temp for 2 hours (partially out of curiosity, but primarily b/c WFH/Covid). On a pizza stone, it turned out spectacularly at 35 minutes :)
Mmmm
The flavor on these is AMAZING, nicely sour and we'll developed. I want to try this recipe again with bread flour. I only had whole wheat on hand, and I got a nice rise and shape on these (usually my baguettes "melt" instead of rise but these went "up" instead of "out."). But the crumb didn't have that baguette airiness. I baked on a stone and the cooking time was considerable longer than the recipe states, but my oven runs cold.
Karen Kiyo
Is an “eel blade” the same as a rough hook attachment?
willa appel
These were pretty bad; rock hard and not very tasty. I make sourdough bread all of the time and these are just not worth it
Terry
This was my first attempt at sourdough and this baguette recipe is by far the easiest to understand. I think my oven was a little hot and I took the baguettes out early, before they got too dark. Nicely done inside, crisp, yet chewy crust.
Sourdough.
Too much flour. Misleading receipt
John
35-45 minutes st 450 degrees?! I followed the recipe exactly as written. At 35 minutes I had two very dark bread logs that looked more like pretzels than baguettes. I'll have to report on taste and texture after they cool.
Jeanette
Bread turned out great the first time but I added 2 hours of cold fermenting step 4, removed them from the refrigerator then let them sit at room temp for an hour prior to baking. Turned out with much more flavor and pronounced 'sour' taste.
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