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!!!
Yes, rice flour works very well to help prevent stickiness; you can also combine rice and other flours as desired, to a somewhat reduced effect.
Yes, the sticking probably contributed to the deflation but not entirely. Your write-up suggests that there may have been problems with overproofing, or over-hydration of the dough.
If the dough gets that slack early on, it's probably got too much water in it.
If the dough gets that slack after your final rise, it's most certainly overproofed. 3.5 hours to rise may be too long; with sourdough, it really depends on the activity of the sourdough, room temp and other factors, which means you need to pay more attention to the behavior of the dough instead of the recipe. Read about the "poke test" and learn to use it. Before baking, the dough should be less than double its shaped volume (a 175% increase is best, because it will give you oven spring).
The flatness of your loaf also suggests overproofing because there was very little oven spring.
Thanks for the reply. I follwed the ingredients as so in the book and it was first attempt so I had to use this as a bench mark. I proofed longer becasue in the book he says to proof at 78-80 degrees I had a temp of 73 degrees so thats why i did it like this. I will try again.
Chad Robertonson's bread IMO is a pretty wet dough. In the beginning I couldn't handle the high hydration and just cut the hydration to 70% (the bread still tasted amazing) and I slowly worked my way up as my skill with handling dough improved.
There might be many factors to your bread not having good oven spring but I think that the main cause was the bread getting stuck to your towel which most likely "deflated" the dough. This happened to me many times in the beginning and I just began using well oiled bowls.
Another thing is that it might be possible that the bread didn't form enough gluten. From your comments you do say that there was well developed gluten formation but after your bench rest, if your dough was more of a disc like puddle then a boule that means another fold and turn was in order.
Free form loaves are the most difficult to shape because without having very good surface tension, the dough just collapses with any nudge (in this case your towel sticking to your dough). Make sure you're able to achieve this. To solve your problems with the dough sticking to your hands either a)rub oil on your hands or b)keep your hands well floured (as shown in the pictures of the book, keep a bag of flour next to you and just keep dipping your hands in it)
Hope this helps!
Yeah I know the towel ruined it but i still feel it wasnt holding its shape well. It wasnt a wet puddle but it also wasnt firm enough.
Did you use the combo cooker?
Yes i did
Was much better. I used slightly less water bit i def felt the difference in the folds and felt the dough develop way more.
nice job! that looks great.
yes stretch and fold makes a huge difference, especially with slack doughs.
Just want a little more crispness next time. Maybe bake a little longer.
Yeah, that's a tough thing, lots of sourdough crusts go soft because the bread retains a lot of moisture. Try letting the loaf cool for 30 minutes in the oven with a cracked door, that will help. Also re-heating the bread in the oven before eating will help too.
The bread looks awesome, great open crumb and doing this on your second try is nothing short of amazing. How far did you lower the hydration?
Thanks still trying to improve each time. What I did for the hydration was this: in the book he says to use 750 grams of water using 700 grams at first then after the autolyse add the 50g. I addes maybe 20grams of that instead of the whole 50g.
Just an update on my latest tartine bread. I have been getting better each bake. I have full control of my starter and have been for at least 2 months now. I found a solution to my dough stickingto the towel as I have not found any rice flour. I use parchment paper intead and it rolls right off no sticking.
Only issue I have now is that the bottom of my loaves are burning just a bit inside my dutch oven. Should I lower me temps? I do love the colors though so don't want to lose that. I attached some pics.
Your bread looks lovely. I'm not sure what kind of oven you have (gas or electric), but I had a problem with the bottom being a little too dark as I have electric coils on the bottom of the oven. If you're in the same situation as I, my solution is to put a pizza stone on the most bottom rack (i'm pretty sure even a cookie sheet will help from the direct heat).