Place your yeast (dry active or fresh) into a small bowl and pour in lukewarm water). Dissolve the yeast completely in the water. Keep aside
1½ Teaspoon Instant Yeast, ⅓ Cup Water
Take a large bowl and pour in the flour. Add to that the salt, sugar and olive oil. Pour into the flour also the yeast dissolved in water.
3 Cup All-purpose Flour, ½ Teaspoon Salt, 1 Teaspoon Sugar, 1 Teaspoon Olive Oil
Place your stand mixer or hand mixer dough hook into the flour and other ingredients in the bowl. Pour in all the water.
¾ cup + 2 Tablespoon Water
Turn on your machine and start mixing and kneading the dough. Knead the dough until you have a smooth elastic sticky batter. This can take about 5 minutes.
Dough rising and folding
Scrape batter off the sides of your bowl to assemble it in the center of your mixing bowl.
Wet a kitchen towel so that it's damp and wrap the kitchen towel around the bowl to cover it.
Leave the dough to rest and rise for about 2½ hours at room temperature.
After 2½ hours, remove the damp kitchen towel. Your dough should have risen considerably.
Fold your sticky dough with a silicon kitchen spatula by turning around the bowl. The dough will lose its airiness, and it will fall back to its original size from earlier.
Cover your dough in the bowl once again with the damp kitchen towel and leave to rest and rise for another 2 hours.
After 2 hours, prepare your baguette pan. Cut your parchment paper to the size of your baguette pan. Sprinkle some water over the pan and place parchment paper into the pan. It will stick and take on the shape of the pan, thanks to the sprinkled water.
Fold your dough for the second and last time.
Baguette pan
Spread some sticky dough with the help of a silicon spatula in one of the molds. Do that in batches and add small dough quantities into the mold, a bit at a time.
The dough can be spread with the motion of the silicone spatula dragging it into a direction. Make sure to shape it in at the borders too. (see video)
Leave the shaped raw baguette dough to rise for another 30 minutes in the baguette pan. They will both gain a little shape and turn lighter.
Preheat oven to 460 Fahrenheit (240 degree Celsius). Tip: Keep a ramekin or an oven safe bowl with water in your oven, which will create steam and help in the formation of the crust.
Dust your baguettes with flour.
All-purpose Flour
Score in at the top of your baguette with a very sharp knife. Tip: Keep a knife in the freezer for 10 minutes. Scoring the sticky dough with the frozen knife will be much easier.
Baking and finishing
Bake the baguette at 460 Fahrenheit (240 degree Celsius) for about 20 minutes. It may vary between 17 and 20 minutes, depending on your oven. The baguette is done when it turns golden brown.
Take out your baguette and leave to cool.
Once the loaves have cooled, remove excess flour.
Enjoy your homemade baguette!
Video
Notes
Try to get and use pastry flour, it's much lighter and better suited for making baguette bread. Also, 00 or double zero flour is an option. If you have all-purpose flour at home, you can use that too, but Paul said that his baguette wouldn't turn out that light with all-purpose flour.
You can choose between active dry yeast or fresh compressed yeast. Paul used a fresh yeast cube in the video because the bread turns out better, as fresh yeast tends to be a better quality yeast. But it's alright to use dry active yeast in this recipe too.
Dry to fresh yeast conversion for 2 Baguette: 1½ Teaspoon dry active yeast equals 0.4 ounces fresh compressed cake yeast or about ⅔ of the compressed yeast cube. That's 12 grams fresh cake compressed yeast.
We mix the yeast in the water to help it activate. It's also easier to spread it that way into the dough.
Knead the dough well with the kitchen machine dough hook. The dough should be sticky, smooth, and elastic.
The dough has to rise as per instruction or else it won't turn out airy. The dough rises, and then you have to fold it. You do that because the yeast needs to eat through a new batch of carbs in your dough. Their eating creates air pockets and that's why your dough is rising and getting all airy and fluffy.
Cut the parchment paper into the shape and size of the baguette pan.
Use a silicone spatula to spread out the dough in the baguette mold. You won't reach anywhere without this tool, so it's essential!
Score your raw baguette with a sharp knife. An ice-cold knife can deal better with the sticky dough. Another option is a razor blade, but I, personally, found it to be a clumsy option and much preferred the cold knife.
Preheat and bake with a bowl of water in a ramekin or an ovenproof bowl left in the oven. This will create steam in the oven and result in a crunchier bread crust.