“Pain Tradition” is a common type of baguette available at any French *Boulangerie* (Bakery). The recipe is so simple yet so delicious, you don’t even need anything on it. I adapted this from a French boulanger’s guide to making baguettes at home and adapted it to American measurements and products. To make these properly, you’ll need to invest in some tooling specific to baguette making. You’ll need a baguette tray for four baguettes, a proofing cloth, a baguette transfer board, and a dough scraper. You’ll also need a timer of some sort. I prefer using a mechanical kitchen timer over my phone because my hands get covered in dough. # Ingredients - 4 cups Bob’s Red Mill Bread Flour. - 1 cup Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Flour. - 2 tbsp salt. I recommend Sel du Guerande if you can find it. - 1 tbsp Bob’s Red Mill Active Yeast or 1 ½ packets Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast. - 2 ¾ cups of filtered water. # Directions 1. In a stand-up mixer (recommended) or a mixing bowl, mix the water and yeast well and let sit for ten minutes. 2. Add the salt first, then both flours. Make sure the salt is well dissolved before adding the flour. Mix well and let sit for 1 hour and 20 minutes. It’s normal that the dough will be too sticky to manipulate. If you’ve done breadmaking in the past, it may not have the same consistency as you’re used to. In the next step, it should pour, not flop, out of the bowl. 3. Using a rubber spatula, pour the mixture from the bowl onto a large flour-dusted surface or cutting board. At this point and throughout the process, you can put away your bread flour and just keep the bag of whole wheat flour nearby. Use this to dust the dough and surface as needed. Do this now with the dough you just poured out. 1. Tip: When dusting, raise your hand high above the surface to spread the flour thin like snowfall. 4. Using the dough scraper, fold the dough like a taco. Then let sit covered with a kitchen towel for 20 minutes. Repeat this flip + 20m wait for a total of four times. Each time, lightly dust the top of the dough so it is not sticky to the touch. 5. Now it’s time to cut the dough into the portions that will become baguettes. In this step, you can weigh out each baguette to make sure they are equally sized. I prefer to practice getting as close as I can and embracing imperfection. For this approach, cut the dough in half, then cut the halves in half. 6. For each of the four lumps, dust them again for handling, then fold each like a taco again like you did with the entire dough in the previous step. Cover and wait 20 minutes. 7. While you’re waiting, lay out your proofing cloth. If this is your first time using a proofing cloth, do a quick search on how to care for your cloth and get it ready each time. Briefly, it’s important to never wash your cloth and make sure there is only a thin layer of flour worked into it. 8. After the 20 minutes, roll the lumps into baguette shapes. Make sure to measure your baguette tray so you don’t make them too long. Some baguette transfer boards have measurements on them, which is handy in this step. When rolling, take care to preserve the bubbles in the bread. You should not need to press or apply any force at all on the dough. Just roll the dough back and forth with your hands moving in a “V” shape to gently stretch it out. 9. For each baguette you roll out, flop it onto the proofing cloth leaving about 8-10 inches on the left and right side so you can fold the sides over the four baguettes in the end. Each time you place a baguette, fold up the cloth to the right of the baguette so as much of it is touching the proofing cloth as possible. This will make little trays of baguettes with the cloth. Then fold the sides over to cover them completely. Let these proof for 30m. 10. While you’re waiting, now is a good time to prepare the oven. Preheat to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a long wide pan, like a lasagna dish, fill it with water and place this on the bottom shelf of the oven. Make sure you have another rack as high up as you can (leaving enough clearance) for the baguettes. This step creates a kind of humid oven. You want the steam to distribute as evenly as possible so the best combination is a dish roughly the same dimensions as the baguette tray itself. 11. After proofing is complete, flop each baguette onto the transfer board, then into the baguette tray. Be very careful opening the oven to wait a few seconds. You’ll likely get a hot cloud of steam to the face otherwise. It won’t hurt you but it’s not pleasant either. Place the baguettes in the oven. At this stage, the baguettes cook so quickly, I don’t even time it but expect to be standing in front of the oven after 8-10 minutes monitoring its final baking. 12. Finding the right moment to remove the baguettes takes some trial and error. You may need to allow the tips to darken to a black, just at the very ends, before the entire baguette is cooked completely. When these look ready, take them out and let them cool in the tray. This cooling process is actually still part of the cooking. The tray is still coming down from 500 degrees and is not inhibited by the steam. I would not lift the baguettes for a good 5-10 minutes at this time so the bottom of the bread can catch up with the top.