Baguettes … ?

Baked: 9/21/2025

In which I experiment with alternate shaping for baguette dough.

Tartine Bread describes several different methods of shaping a baguette, so I decided to try some! As before, I was working with the basic baguette formula documented in the book, using a combination of levain and poolish.

I’ve really come to enjoy working with the baguette dough. Most of the work is done the night before and with the prefermenting processes. After the final dough is mixed, the bulk fermentation is fast and, I’ve found, predictable. The baguette form, however, is a little tricky in a home oven – without space to bake a full sized baguette, one ends up with many demi baguettes which are fun but just a lot of shaping and baking. So, having more baking options was a very appealing prospect.

The one I best documented is called fendu, where the loaf is shaped like a batard and then pressed down the middle to create a split. I found this method documented here. This was a fun shape to make! This is what the loaves looked like after proofing.

As you can see in the bottom photo, my loaves tended to seam up after proofing. The first loaf didn’t have much of a visible split after baking, but the second loaf looked a little more distinguishable.

Another technique described in the book is to shape the baguette like normal but then twist the shaped dough as if wringing a towel. I don’t have an oven large enough to fit a full sized baguette, so I decided to allow the twisting from the wringing to shape itself into a spiral. This created the loaf pictured at the top of the post.

Lessons learned? Baguette dough is flexible and turns out delicious even in different shapes. I would definitely make more of these loaves again.