No Knead Baguette – 4 ingredient recipe

To make this no knead baguette, you DON’T need to prepare any professional baguette baking tools, such as baguette pan, baking stone, flipping board, or even bread lame.

Only 4 simple ingredients are needed: all purpose flour (mine is 11.7% protein), water, salt, and instant dry yeast.

And yes baguette is considered vegan (is yeast vegan?), and of course dairy free!

Simply mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, spend less than 5 minutes on shaping the dough, then rise the dough in the fridge overnight, you don’t have to knead the dough (because the dough is too sticky to be kneaded)!

EQUIPMENT for making no knead baguette

• Oven – Just use a regular household oven with “bake” mode.
• Large mixing bowl
• Kitchen scale
• Baking pan – I used a 17-inch cookie sheet to hold the baguettes, and a 13 inch deep baking pan to hold the boiling water.
• Nonstick foil – We will bake our baguettes at 530°F, however most parchment paper is rated for use at temperatures no higher than 420 to 450 degrees, therefore we should use nonstick foil in this recipe.

Other equipment you might want to use if you have:

1. Baguette Pan

A baguette pan is usually two or three long half-tubes joined at the sides, used for holding baguettes’ shape and making the crust crispy after baking.

But you don’t necessarily need a baguette pan to make well-shaped and crispy-crust no knead baguette.

The baguette dough should be able to hold its shape by itself as long as it’s not overly proofed.

And we will use a high temperature to bake our baguette for a short time, in this way the baguettes can form crispy crust and hold their shapes better.

2. Baking Stone

A baking stone can absorb the oven’s heat from the air and transfer the heat to the baguettes.

In this way, the no knead baguette can be baked at a temperature that’s higher than your oven temperature, and form a crispy crust and a deep golden brown color.

But a baking stone is also not necessary. We can use a high oven temperature to create crispy crust and flip the baguettes halfway through baking time to make them evenly colored.

3. Lava Rocks

As introduced by King Arthur Baking Company, achieving an open crumb and crispy baguette crust requires a lot of steam in the oven:

The steam at the start of baking can: 1. hold off the formation of the crust, so that the baguette loaf can expand maximally and form a thin crust; 2. transfer heat efficiently to the loaf, so that it gets heated up rapidly and evenly; 3. Gelatinize the starches on the out layer of the dough, making the finished baguette shiny and crisp. 

Commercial bread ovens have a steam injection system to create enough steam as needed. Some professional homemade baguette recipes will suggest you to “preheat a pan filled with lava rocks on the bottom of your oven”, and pour water over the lava rocks to create a large amount of steam at the start of the baking.

If you don’t have lava stones available, or you don’t want to take the risk of exploding your glass oven door, here is my simplified method: use a baking pan filled with boiling water to create the steam.

The baking pan filled with boiling water won’t create as much steam as the lava rocks are able to, but it’s much easier and has always been working great for making my no knead baguette looks and tastes great.

INGREDIENTS for making no knead baguette

1. All purpose flour

In France, baguette is made with a particular flour called T55, which is is equivalent to Type 0 Italian flour, Euro 550 type flour and American all-purpose flour.

Yes, the best flour choice for making no knead baguette is actually regular all purpose flour. Good to know haha!

The all purpose flour I used has 11.7% protein. You can use any kind of all purpose flour with a protein content between 11.0% to 12.5%.

2. Water

While most baguette recipes have been telling us to use “lukewarm water”, I have been using room temperature bottled water for my no knead baguette dough for years.

When you use warm water for the baguette dough, there’s risk of killing the yeasts when the water is hotter than 140°F or 60°C.

Therefore, I’d suggest you to just use room temperature water for making my no knead baguette.

3. Yeast

You can use instant yeast and active dry yeast interchangeably at a ratio of 1:1 to make no knead baguette.

For instant yeast, which I used this time, you don’t have to rehydrate it before being mixed it into flour.

If you are using active dry yeast, you will need to proof the yeast in water for 10 minutes, then add salt and flour to the bubbly yeast water mixture.

4. Salt

We add salt to no knead baguette dough not only for the taste, but also because salt can tighten the gluten strands, so that the baguette dough can hold carbon dioxide more efficiently and form more large bubbles.

Will salt kill yeast?

Yes, salt can kill yeast, but only in significant amounts.

The ideal amount of salt in bread dough is 1.4 to 2% of salt based on flour weight, which is 7g to 10g salt for 500g flour.

An appropriate amount of salt can control the growth and reproduction speed of yeast in your baguette dough. If we skip the salt in our no knead baguette recipe, the dough will proof too fast and collapse after baked.

INSTRUCTIONS for making no knead baguette

1. Add 500g all purpose flour, 350g room temperature water, 5g instant yeast, and 8g salt into a large mixing bowl. Mix with a silicone spatula until there is no dry flour in the bowl (you don’t need to make the dough smooth). Cover the bowl with plastic food wrap, leave the dough to rise under room temperature for 30 minutes (when it’s warm around 78 °F) to 1 hour (when it’s cold about 68 °F).

2. Use clean hands to lift up a corner of the baguette dough, fold it towards the center of the dough. Rotate the mixing bowl a few inches so your next pass is shifted over from your first, and repeat this lifting up and folding process for 9 times (You should be able to finish this step within 2 minutes).

3. Flip the dough over, so that the relevantly smoother side is facing up. (It’s normal if the dough is sticky and unsmooth for now). Cover the bowl with plastic food wrap, leave the dough to rise under room temperature for 30 minutes

4. 30 minutes later, repeat step 2 (the lifting up and folding process).

5. Cover the bowl with food wrap, keep it in the fridge overnight (8 to 24 hours).

6. When you are ready to bake the dough, take the bowl out from the fridge, dust your work surface and your hands with a thin layer of flour. Gently transfer the dough to your working surface (try not to break the bubbles inside the dough).

7. Dust a scraper or a knife with a thin layer of flour, cut the dough into halves.

8. Form each dough into a ball shape with the smoother side facing up. Dust a thin layer of flour over the doughs, loosely cover them with food wrap. Leave the doughs on your working surface for 40 minutes to 1 hour until they return to room temperature.

9. Dust your hands with flour, place one of the doughs on flour dusted work surface with the smoother side facing down, gently deflate the dough with your fingertips by pressing and stretching it into a 8 inch diameter circle. Roll up the dough into a cylinder, pinch to seal the long seam and the two ends. Gently roll and stretch the dough into 15 inches long.

10. Line a baking pan with nonstick foil, dust the foil with a thin layer of flour. Transfer the baguette doughs to the baking pan (seam side down), and dust the baguette doughs with a thin layer of flour. Cover them with plastic food wrap, proof at a room temperature for about 30 minutes.

11. 15 minutes before the dough is sufficiently proofed, filling a baking pan with boiling water, place the baking pan on the bottom rack, preheat the oven to 530°F.

12. Using a bread lame to make 5 scores (¼ inch depth) on each baguette. (I don’t have a bread lame at home, so I brushed some melted butter on a pair of scissors, and cut the scores on my baguette dough.)

13. Open the oven, place the baking pan on the middle rack, bake the baguette at 530°F for 6 to 7 minutes (observe through the glass carefully to prevent from over coloring).

14. Take the baking pan out from the oven, set it on your stovetop, use a pair of tongs to flip each baguette so that the uncolored side is facing up now.

15. Send the baguettes back to the oven to bake at 530°F for 4 to 5 more minutes until they turn golden brown.

16. Remove the baguettes from the oven, transfer them to a cooling rack, allow the baguette to cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing.

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