The Fresh Loaf

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Whole Wheat Tartine Instruction Videos - looking for feedback

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

Whole Wheat Tartine Instruction Videos - looking for feedback

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum, though I've used it extensively over the last six months or so that I've been baking. Some of my friends began asking me on Facebook for instructions for how I make bread. Finally, I worked up an recipe that gave brief but I hope thorough enough instructions with accompanying demo videos for the parts that are better shown than told. I wanted to post the same thing here to ask for feedback on my technique, feedback on my instructions as a resource (especially for beginners), and also just to share this more broadly in case it is useful to anyone. Thanks for taking a look! (Sorry about the formatting issues. I couldn't get all of the formatting to conform to this form's work processing.)

How I make Bread (with Demo Videos)  Ok, I’ve finally put this together. I’m going to explain what I believe is the simplest and most effective way to make bread. Nothing original here, this is all straight out of several of the most respected books on so-called “sourdough” bread making (though it is not sour). My main point here is to give you everything you need to get started and demonstrate how easy this is, but without dumb-ing it down, which is totally unnecessary. Necessary stuff

 

Here’s what you really need, in my opinion: 
  • Decent quality whole wheat bread flour and white bread flour, like King Arthur. If you live in Chicago, please, please do yourself the favor of coming to my apartment (if I sort of know you) and milling real flour here.
  • Salt that's not iodized (important).
  • Water. Tap is usually fine. If yours is really bad you may need an alternate source of water. Chlorine is not nice to yeast.
  • Some kind of pot or dutch oven that can withstand very high temps.
  • A kitchen scale
  • A bowl or container to hold all the dough.
  • A couple bowls that are about 7-10 inches in diameter, also some dish towels.
  • A razor blade (or *equally* sharp knife).
  • A bench scraper. Or something.
  • Parchment paper
  • Most importantly: sourdough starter (I’m not explaining that part here, but I will do an additional Facebook post about it very soon. I recommend just googling it, though. Any of the various directions you see will be fine. Don’t worry about the fact that different directions have different specifics. It’s really very simple, and can be done in many ways. just mix up the flour and water and get started. Or easier still, rip some off someone who already has one going, like me.)
Weight; The baker’s percentage

 

  • You have to have a scale, I’m afraid. Doesn’t need to be expensive. Powdery things do not have a stable volume, they must be weighed. Same with salt.
  • Here’s how you read percentages in baking recipes. First, decide how much flour you are going to use, say 1 kg (that’s two loaves). Call that amount x. Now, if the recipe says to use 90% water, that means 90% of x, or 900 grams. Every ingredient given in a percentage is a percentage of x, i.e., a percentage of the amount of flour. (So don’t add up the percentages and expect them to equal 100!)
Recipe:

 

Flour: 70% whole wheat bread flour, 30% white bread flour.Water: 90%*“Levain” or Leaven: 15%Salt: 2.2%  *First note: The amount of water is hard to pin down because different flours have different capacities to absorb water. This is the amount I use when the wheat flour is real, true whole wheat flour, ground directly from wheat berries. This is almost impossible to find at (even fancy) stores. Don’t believe the lies printed on packaging. It’s complete fraud and should be severely punished. Please observe the consistency of my dough in the videos, and adjust the water if necessary. Don’t worry about exact precision (except with salt, though you may also decide to adjust (most likely decrease) the salt level due to flour differences). Bread is about procedure more than ultra-precise recipes. These ingredients are so cheap that you can afford to experiment a bit.  Second note: Bearing the first note in mind, I am not dumb-ing this down by decreasing the water or increasing the white flour content to make it easier (and it would make it easier). Don’t worry, you can do it the way I’m recommending, from the beginning, and it is the correct way, in my (correct) opinion :) (even more water may be better). Procedure

 

The times of day are not important, just an example.  
  • Step A - 8:00 am
       -Begin leaven: For each kg of flour in your recipe, combine


1 Tablespoon of late-cycle (quite acidic and bubbly) starter
200 grams of white bread flour
200 grams of water<!--break-->                -Begin soaker: Thoroughly combine flour and all of the water except 5%. Cover (but don’t seal) both bowls and leave them out at room temperature  
  • Step B - When the leaven is ready; for me, 3:00 pm-ish When the leaven is ready (video), thoroughly mix the correct amount of leaven in the recipe with the soaker (keep the rest, this is your starter now for future bakes). Now, see Video Demo #1 - Judging When the Levain is Ready; Mixing it in.
    Leave this out for one hour. Cover, don’t seal. This period is called the autolyse.
  
  • Step C - let’s say it’s 4:00 pm now. Thoroughly mix in the salt and the remaining 5% water.
  
  • Step D We are now entering the period called bulk fermentation. Leave it out. Every half hour, for 2 to 2.5 hours, turn the dough. See Video Demo #2 - Turning the Dough. Now, after the turning is finished, we still leave the dough out until it has risen by 15 to 20%. Maybe 25%. This may not require any extra time, it may happen before this turning period is finished. For me it takes a total of 4 to 5 hours. These things can vary a lot for a lot of reasons. Just follow the rising, don’t worry about rules.
      Baking (the next morning)

 

I’m going to let the videos take it from here.Video Demo #5 - Heating the Oven; Beginning the Bake  Video Demo #6 - About Steam and the Dutch Oven; Oven Spring   Video Demo #7 - Finishing the Bake; Evaluating But here’re (that’s a contraction I’m pioneering) a few specs. I hate looking back at video recipes and scrubbing around to try to find a simple number. 
  • Preheat oven with your dutch oven or pot and lid inside to enough above 505 F that when the door is opened twice and the loaf is put in, it will actually be around 505 F instantly when the door is finally closed. This is important. We need serious heat, and we need it without any delay. I preheat to about 540 F.
  • Bake for 20 minutes at 505-ish, though I actually like to let the heat begin to drop toward 485 toward the end of this 20 minutes. Don’t stress about that kind of thing. Just feel it out.
  • Remove lid. Reduce temperature to 460 F. Bake till it has very, very dark spots and a gradient toward some lighter, golden brown colors. Normally 15-20 minutes.
MichaelH's picture
MichaelH

Very nice job Benjamin, you put a lot of work into this and it came out well. The videos, the bread and your instructions speak well of your skills. Hope to see see more, and welcome to the forum.

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

Thank you, MichaelH!

DeKay's picture
DeKay

A huge amount of work obviously went into this.  As someone who has struggled with Tartine 70% WW, this will certainly help me and others.  I don't have a mill, so perhaps that is a good part of the problem.  Really liked seeing your skill in shaping this high hydration dough.

One question though: your stretch and folds in the bucket are relatively slow and gentle.  I've heard others advocate more of a quick, decisive pull to get better gluten development.  Have you tried this?

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

I'm really glad you brought this up, because I've actually been suspicious that a quicker and more decisive method may be better. Dave Miller certainly seems to work that way in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY3tVY-Nx-E.

I'm going to try that next time I bake. Thanks for that.

DeKay's picture
DeKay

I was thinking of the turns during the bulk ferment like Chad Robertson is doing here.

https://youtu.be/cIIjV6s-0cA?t=114

Another thing I found that made a big difference to the extensibility of the dough for breads with a lot of whole wheat flour is an overnight autolyse instead of an hour.  Robertson advocates this in one of his later books (Tartine 3, I think).  It makes a big difference for me when you get to shaping the loaf.  Give this a try for sure.

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

Gotcha. Should have been clearer. I was more thinking of the general "style" that Dave Miller was exemplifying than the particular stage. So really I've been suspicious that that sort of approach may be better in both the turning and the shaping. What's your experience? Do you think that the slower, gentler approach is good for the shaping, but the quicker and more decisive technique is advantageous during the bulk fermentation? Or would you recommend that quick method all around?

DeKay's picture
DeKay

I would recommend that you don't take my recommendations on shaping, as I am shaping impaired  :-)  The quick stretches during bulk ferment work well for me, especially at the beginning when there is little gluten development.  Later in the ferment, I tend to go easier as the gluten is more developed and I don't want to tear things up.

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

And thanks for that info about the long Autolyse. I'm going to try that.

estherc's picture
estherc

Great videos. Good demonstration. You are relaxed and natural on camera with a very pleasant demeanor. 

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

Thanks, estherc!

alfanso's picture
alfanso

 and good looking boule.  Reminds me of 2 years ago when I fulfilled a promise and did something similar with a baguette bake for a distant acquaintance.  Wound up being > 38 minutes long to go through all of the steps.

alan 

Benjamin Holland's picture
Benjamin Holland

It always ends up way longer than you plan. Mine started out at 50 minutes! So I decided to edit it down to just the parts that can't be described easily in writing and do a combination of text and individual videos. Producing videos is actually my profession, so I would very much like to do this "properly" with more of the sort of production values you would expect to find on a high-budget YouTube channel or something. But that takes a time and a bit of money, though not much since I already have all the equipment. Also, something like that may spread to a wider audience, so I would want to really workshop my method to make sure I'm giving people the best advice (Part of my goal here, really)!