How to make the most delicious sourdough Baguette. This recipe gives you a bread that is soft in the center, crispy on the exterior, and is ultra flavorful.
After living in France in the Summer of 2025 and having baguettes daily, I went on a quest to replicate that incredible bread. After trying dozens of recipes, this one is the one I can say I prefer to even the baguettes I had in Paris. High bar, but these baguettes break french bread law. And they are criminally delicious as a result.
In French bread law you can only have flour, water, yeast, and salt as ingredients. You will find sourdough baguettes sometimes, but they are less common.
Sourdough can be tricky with getting the rise just right, in my process of developing this recipe, I was left with many dense loaves.
My solution? Adding Instant Dry Yeast with the sourdough starter.
This recipe is fool proof where it has you use Dry Instant Yest in addition to your sourdough starter to ensure you have a fluffy rise. So no worries if you sourdough starter is weak or if you want to use sourdough discard for this recipe.
With using both sourdough starter and dry instant yeast you still get all the health benefits of the sourdough starter, where the natural yeasts help digest the gluten and starches. Yet you don’t need to worry if your starter isn’t strong enough so you don’t need to worry about having a flat loaf.
This recipe also stands out because it has a couple of surprising additions to really enhance the flavor. This recipe has you add a few grams of both sugar and MSG to help make those tangy sourdough flavors to really pop.
This also breaks French Bread Law.
But when after completing side by side comparisons, the addition of sugar and MSG really enhances the flavor and makes this taste incredible. Once you try it, you won’t want to go back.
Tips for Making the Best Sourdough Baguette
There are many factors that can influence your baguettes that can influence this recipe.
Having enough steam in your oven is very important if you want that crunchy exterior. If you have a ceramic baguette pan the steam from the bread will be enough to give you a crispy exterior.
Most of us don’t have that specific tool. So instead, you will want to make your oven as steamy as possible.
Boil a pot of water and pour that into a casserole dish and place that at the bottom of your preheated oven- this is a great way to create steam.
In addition to that use a spray bottle to spray water into the interior of the oven. I personally like using this to spray my baguettes so I can sprinkle seasonings onto the exterior before I score and bake them.
Looking for other Sourdough Recipes?
- If you are looking for another flavorful bread, this black garlic loaf is perfection! It’s not only incredible on it’s own with some butter, but it’s also great for sandwiches and inside of stuffing
- Garlic Sourdough Pull a Part bread is hyper flavorful and is incredible with soup. If you love to bake, this loaf will surely impress.
- For all the flavors of pizza in a beautifully shaped bread this pizza bread is always a hit. It is so much fun to shape and the result is gorgeous!
- For a sweeter sourdough bread, this blueberry focaccia is absolutely delicious. It is soft with a crunchy sweet topping, filled with Jamy blueberries.
Sourdough Baguette
Ingredients
- 190 Grams Sourdough Starter
- 420 Grams Water
- 600 Grams Flour
- 12 Grams Salt
- 8 Grams Instant Yeast
- 4 Grams Sugar
- 4 Grams MSG
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine the sourdough starter, flour, and water into a bowl. Mix well and let rest for 15 minutes
- In a small bowl measure and mix together the salt, sugar, yeast, and MSG
- Sprinkle about 1/4 of the salt mixture over the dough. Press it into the dough and stretch and fold the dough over itself. Do 4 stretches and folds around each side of the dough. Let it rest for 20 minutes and add another 4th of the salt mixture, do a stretch and fold.Repeat this until all the mixture is used up.
- Let the dough rest for 1 hour to double in size
- Punch the dough down and do another stretch and fold.Cover and put the dough in the refrigerator and leave it for at least 12 hours to develop flavor, up to 48 hours (36 hours is the perfect sweet spot for flavor and fluffiness)
- Remove the dough from the fridge and place on a floured surface. Divid your dough into 4 sections and shape them into little rectangles. Let rest for 1 hour
- Shape your baguette by folding 1/3 of the dough towards the center and then folding the other side into the center- pinch the dough together, and then roll it into a log. Let rest for 40 minutes
- Preheat your oven to 220c or 450F. Boil a pot of water and pour it into a casserole dish and put that on the bottom shelf of your oven to make your oven steamy. If you want to flavor the exterior of your baguette, spray a little water over the surface and sprinkle your seasoning mix.Score your baguettes and place on a baking sheet, place in the oven and spray a little bit of water in the oven to create more steam. Bake for 10 minutes
- Remove the dish with water from the oven and let the baguettes bake for another 20-30 minutes or until they are golden brown
Video
@jess.flowers How I made these sourdough baguettes 🥖 190g sourdough starter 420g water 600g bread flour 12g salt 4g msg 4g sugar 8g instant yeast Makes 4 baguettes Optional, sprinkle 3g garlic powder, 3g truffle salt, 1g black pepper, 6g nutritional yeast flakes over baguettes before scoring them For best flavor let the dough proof for 36 hours in the refrigerator, but it will also taste good after 12 hours of proofing. Bake in a steamy oven at 220c (450f) for 10 minutes, remove steam, bake until golden brown (about 20 minutes)
♬ original sound – Jess Flowers
Notes
3 grams Garlic Powder
3 grams Truffle Salt
6 grams Nutritional Yeast Flakes
dash of Black Pepper
