Lately I have been baking from Tartine Bread and it has been mostly hits with a few misses. Chad Roberston seems to contradict himself a few times and leave some things unclear. These are my questions/concerns:

1) Sometimes my loaves bake up seemingly baked through, but gummy, wet, and unpleasantly/excessively chewy on the inside. My loaves often experience a cold retardation for about 18 hours. Could this be because of increased enzyme activity over this period of time?

2) I was reading an article in Cooks Illustrated about New York style pizza, and the author claimed that a cold bulk fermentation would result in no CO2 pockets in the dough. Is this statement correct; I have been considering a cold bulk fermentation overnight (without stretch and folds) then shaping in the morning and either allowing to rise at room temp until fully proofed or allow to rise for an hour and then put it in the fridge until dinner (I KNOW! I'm not supposed to be eaten hot; but it's SO GOOD!) Might I also put it in the refridgerator to rise, still cold?

3) What about a cold, overnight autolyse. Or would this, again prove to initiate too much enzyme activity and perhaps use too much of the yeast's resources?

Thank you bread experts!

I know most people have a preference for using either gas or electric ovens.  For those of you shopping for a new or used one to purchase, I thought I'd point out the basic costs of running them so you can weigh out the pros and cons using your local electricity or gas costs.  I'll base this example on the two ovens I use; one is electric and one is gas (LP).

Electric ovens are rated in watts used per hour or KWH (thousands of watts per hour).  So an oven that is rated at 11,000 watts uses 11 Kilowatts per hour or 11 KWH.
The electric company bases their charges on KWH, mine is $.057/KWH.
That means my electric oven costs 11 x $.057 = $.63 per hour to run.

Propane and Natural Gas ovens are rated in BTU/hour (here anyway).  My LP oven uses 60,000 BTU per hour.  It takes approximately 1 gallon of propane to burn 90,000 BTU.  So my oven uses (60,000/90,000) .67 of a gallon of propane to run for 1 hour.  Since propane cost me $2.19 per gallon, my running cost per hour is .67 x $2.19 =  $1.46 per hour.

Of course these are approximates based on the manufacturer's specs, plus different ovens take longer to heat up than others and retain their heat more or less. 
There you go.

-Mark

http://TheBackHomeBakery.com