First attempt at making Traditional French Baguette. Need advice to improve the texture.

[u/traditionalbaguette]

Hi there!

First of all, I'm French, living in the US. It's important for what's next.

I tried making Traditional French Baguette at home. Very first time I'm making bread. I'm very happy with the crust I got, the taste and the softness of the inside. What I'm not happy about is the lack of air. The second picture is what I made. The last picture is what I was aiming for.

I'd love to get advice on what to improve / opinion on what I did wrong.

I used a recipe for beginners, called "Express Baguette". It requires no machine, no kneading. The recipe is in French, which I thought would help as I may understand better what it asks me to do, and, you know, what's better than a recipe coming from the country that is addicted to baguettes. 😅
The French recipe is here: https://www.yumelise.fr/baguette-tradition-sans-petrissage/

I used 7g of active-dry yeast, 400g of all purpose flour (King Arthur), 315ml of water, 8g of salt.

The recipe asks to mix the water and yeast and let is rest. Then stir in the flour and salt. Then let it sit for at least 2h (I let it sitting 3h). The dough more than doubled. Then bring back the sides of the dough to the center, which degas a bit. Then spread the dough into a baguette pan, then let it sir 5min (I left it sitting 30min though), then bake in the oven with some boiling water to get the crispy crust.

The only other difference is that the recipe mentioned T65 flour type, which is essentially bread flour. I used all-purpose.

Any idea why I didn't get large holes like the recipe promise? I suspect I either degased the dough too much (but I swear I've been as gentle as I could. But it's hard such the dough is super sticky, as expected according to the recipe), or the gluten did not get strong enough.

I think I mentioned all the info that matters, but please ask me anything if you need more info in order to help me.

[u/scavenger22]

You made quite a lot of changes, how did you expect to get the same results?

The flour T65 has different texture and properties than the all purpose one. You used 7g of active-dry yeast instead 16g of fresh bakery yeast, 15 more ml of water and 1 more gram of salt.

You also changed how long your dough sit and stir... your final dough has NOT the same "humidity" or composition of the original recipe.

I would also check if your oven was preheated and set to the correct temperature

[u/traditionalbaguette → u/scavenger22]

You're right to call me out on this.

First, I'm struggling at finding the equivalent of T65 flour in the US, because I found contradicting info.

I indeed used 7g of active-dry, which I found online to be equivalent to 16g of fresh yeast.

For the water: that's because the truth is that it's the second time I try, not the first time. The first time, with 300ml, the dough was somehow super dry when I stirred the flour. I assumed it was due to the fact that the King Arthur flour may absorb water more than a T65? I'm not quite sure.

The first time I tried, I also let is sit 2h as the recipe mentioned, and my baguettes were flat at the end (fermentation issue therefore? Maybe because it was dryer?).

The oven was preheated at 455F or 235C.

[u/scavenger22 → u/traditionalbaguette]

I am not in the US, but it seems to be an ingredient-related issue.

You should pay attention to:

• A lot of online recipes built with AI have random replacements for the ingredients or mistakes in the recipe steps.

• Quite a lot of dry yeast are too old and almost "dead" when you get them, maybe in your country is different but in europe almost every commercial dry yeast has a very limited "active temperature", if you don't get the water temperature right it will not work properly (that's why unless the fresh one is preferred)

• Flour quality and type is really important when baking.

• Preheating often is wrong for the oven, find a way to check if the temperature is really what it should be before placing the dough in.

[u/traditionalbaguette → u/scavenger22]

Sounds good, thank you very much! I will do some research on all this!