First Tartine Bake (Long)
I bought the Tartine Book and started my starter like 9 days ago and finally got it peaking at a predictable manner, so I know it was ready to use for my country loaf. Here is my process and I will tell you guys about my results:
I pretty much followed the book to a T but I had to make a few changes. The night before around 10pm I made my leaven and in the morning around 7am was bubbly and smelled perfect. It passed the float test but the thing is I had to leave so I didn't get back till 12pm and it did smell a little more sour but it still past the float test. I then measured all my ingredients and mixed my dough according to the book. Mixed all ingredients until no more dry flour and let rest for 25-40 mins which I waited the 40 minutes. I then added my salt and another 50 grams of water. After a half hour i did my first fold and continued to do this until every half hour up until 4 hours. I did see fermentation going on ie bubbles and dough did develop gluten nicely. My kitchen was around 72-73 degrees.
At the end of the 4 hours I then followed the instructions and turned the bread on my counter floured it and cut down the middle, then flipped each piece on to the floured side and then turned the cut edge into itself. I then formed into a ball and let rest covered for 30 minutes.
After the 30 minutes I went to form my final loaves. I did the fold method as per the book and the dough kept sticking to my hands I put flour on my hands and could not get alot of surface tension. The ball kept going kinds of disk like and was still very wet. i thought by now it would be stiffer but I lines 2 bowls with kitchen towels dusted flour on the towels then plopped in my dough covered and let rise for 3 and half hours at 72 degrees.
I preheated my oven to 500 with the combo cooker and after 20 minutes I took out the shallow end and placed dough inside the pan. Huge problem was that dough got stuck on towel and I had to pull dough off with my fingers and lost some dough that stuck to the towel. On top of that the top of my dough wasn't smooth any longer and still wet. I went to score the dough and the dough was wet and I could not get a good score on it on top of the fact that I have a dull scoring blade. it barely cut through. I put the cooker back in oven turned down the oven to 450 and put top back on.
After 20 minutes pulled the top off and didn't get the rise and height and couldn't even see the scoring on the loaf it was kind of flat. After 20 more minutes I took bread out. This morning I cut open the bread and had good open crumb and flavor was really good.
I just want to know what I can do to get more height. Also how to score better should I make a less wet dough? Should I have more tension on my dough and have dough be a little stiffer?
How can I get my scored loaves to pop and puff out? Is the issue the towel that got stuck? Should I use the rice flour they recommend in the book as I used only reg flour on the kitchen towel.
Any help would be appreciated!!!