Tartine Country Bread 2.0

Recently, I'm reading Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread before sleep. His concept and method in bread baking are unique. I tried the Tartine Country loaf before reading his book, while I decide to try it again sticking to his procedure. 

Here's the recipe(I can't get good whole wheat flour here, so I replace it with whole rye flour).

1.Make the leaven. I fed my starter(4g) with 25g bread flour, 25g whole rye flour, 50g water. At 26C, it takes about five hours to pass the floating test.

2.Mix the dough. Mix all the ingredient except salt and 25g water. It's shaggy. Don't worry. Gluten will develop in later procedures.  Autolyse for 30 minute. Incorporate salt and the rest of water with the dough by hand. Transfer the dough into a plastic container.

3. Bulk fermentation. At 26C, it takes about four hour and the dough increases 20~30% in volume. Do stretch and fold every half an hour. I did 5 S&Fs. The dough is no longer shaggy but cohesive, which means good gluten development.

4. Shaping. Dough cutter is an useful tool in shaping this kind of wet dough. There's an useful shaping video  on youtube, which inspired me a lot.

Initial shaping:In this procedure, we want to incorporated as little flour as possible into the dough. Fold the side of dough onto itself so that the flour one the surface of the dough is sealed on the outside of the dough.The outer surface of the dough will be the crust, so we can use more flour to avoid sticking.

Bench rest: 30min.

Final shaping: Flip the dough so that the floured side is resting on the surface. Shape the dough like folding the envelope. Round the dough on the surface to achieve surface tension. The dough is soft and jiggling, so every movement needs to be gentle. Transfer it to the proofing basket.

5.Final proof. At 26C, it takes about 3~4 hours. At the end of this stage, I was too sleepy, so I popped it into the oven after only 3 hours. However, I think 4 hours might be better.

6.Baking. Preheat the dutch oven  40min before baking. It proves that dutch oven is the perfect device in baking this bread. It can restore heat and trap the moisture, and it's like a auto steam generator. Transfer the dough into the dutch oven and score the dough.(My scoring turns out to be awful.) Remember to wear oven mitts, otherwise it can burn your fingers. Pop it into the oven. Bake with the lid on for the first 15 minute. Take the lid out for the rest 25 minute.

There's a hugh oven spring inside the oven. And the cracking sound is the loudest I've ever heard, which owes to the dutch oven. This time, my loaf is no longer a flat bread. The volume increased a lot, comparing my last trial. The crumb is open, but still has room for improvement. I'm going to make them into some delicious sandwiches for my New Year's brunch.