First Tartine attempt
Hi! I just got a copy of "Tartine" (it might be a little outdated, but what the hell). Anyway, this is the first attempt at the basic country loaf recipe. I think the crimb should be more open, at least according to the pictures, but I still liked it very much.
What do you think is causing the crumb not to be as open as desired? Is it a problem of shaping or fermentation/proofing? I followed the instructions as closely as I could, but in the morning the levain was a little mre ripe than I expected, and I couldn't control the temperature very well, I used water at room temperature and put the dough in the oven with a pot of hot water during the bulk fermentation, by the time I shaped the loaf, my kitchen was at about 75°F so it wasn't really necessary. It proofed for about 3.5 hours; eventhough the book says to proof for 3-4, I think its possible that it was slightly over-proofed since as I said, I think the levain was a bit more active than desired. Also, I still have to practice the whole idea of being very gentle on the shaping and last turns to avoid degassing; I was doing it all wrong, thinking that the most important part of shaping was to get the gluten very tense before the final proof, but it was the other way around, am I right?
Anyway, I'm liking it very much, I think I can learn a lot from the whole method. I also got a copy of "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast", so I'll be experimenting with that soon too. I get the impression that the community around here actually prefers FWSY, right?
Cheers and happy baking!
Comments
That was the first successful loaf of bread I ever made and I really think it is a great formula. Bake it many more times and pay attention to the dough temperature if you have a thermometer.
And, if you like walnuts, try the walnut variation on this loaf. It is truly wonderful.
I happen to like FWSY quite a bit and think it makes a great "next step" book once you tire of Tartine. You may never tire of Tartine, however. That bread is just so darned delicious. One of the reasons I love FWSY is that he talks about volumes that are easy to see on my cambro container. Triple in volume is easier to measure than Chad's "25-30%". Silly, I know.
agree with David, this is great formula and your result looks super! I prefer Tartine 3 to the first Tartine because of all the add-ins, porridge, seeds etc and the greater variety of grains, but Tartine was a great place for me to start. I absolutely love FWSY, agree there is something just a bit easier to grasp about volumes, after a while you tend to get a feel for what looks and feels right. All my Forkish breads have turned out really well and have excellent flavour. By the way, I like your crumb the way it is, bigger holes are beautiful but all the yummy cheese and jam and hummus and stuff schmeared on falls through so I am a fan of the crumb you got. Nice bake!
Thank you for the input. It might sound silly, David, but little things like that make a lot of difference when you want to get serious about it, right? That's good advice. I'll try the walnut bread soon, I also want to try the rye bread recipe. I like both books for the methodology; I'm not much of a fixed recipe person, even my own recipes I'm allways tweaking something, but I want to learn the method mostly, and it has some very good ideas too that I'd like to try.
I also like this kind of crumb tu put butter or anything else on it; but there's something about that really open crumb that is so appealing and beatiful, right? I want to achieve it at least once just for the sake of it :P
I made the same formula yesterday and got slightly bigger holes (with a two hour road trip with the dough in the back seat between the last turn and the shaping) so I think I´m starting to get the idea.
Thanks!
Happy baking.
Pablo
I actually think your crumb looks really wonderful...it shows that its is well fermented, with no areas where the crumb is really dense (I can show you plenty of Tartine loaves where there are big holes surrounded by pretty solid dough).
While realizing first that you are definitely on track and making nice bread, the variables you might play with are the number and strength of your folds, how you handle the dough (go search for videos on Tartine bread), and also hydration...Chad has generally scaled back the hydration level for the basic recipe in the book, but uses higher hydration levels himself. As you get comfortable with handling sticky doughs, you might work into the 80's in terms of hydration percentage.
Nice work...
While all the tartine experts are here, wondering if someone can tell me how chad calculates his percentages? He seems to not include the leaven as part of the flour or water percentage - eg the basic recipe
1000 g flour
750g water
200g leaven
20g salt
And he says that's 75% hydration. But given the leaven is 100% hydration, you've got total flour at 1100, total water at 850, which is hydration of 77.3% I think
Anyone?
As I've said, I'm no Tartine expert, but that seems to be the general aproach: don't think of the leaven as flour and water, think of it as leaven. I've seen that same aproach in many recipes around here. And I've seen the same complaints about the book in many sites.
But I like how Chad emphasizes observation and intuition. And in the end, how much difference does 2.3% of hidration really make, considering that the book is targeted for home-baking?
Thanks Grobread. I know it won't make that much difference, i'm more on a quest for understanding than a quest for pin point accuracy! I used to be a scientist so I think I always want to know HOW and WHY things work rather than just blindly following. I noticed some books do include the leaven as flour and water, others don't, and I wanted to see if there was something I just wasn't getting.