Three Breads in Three Days

Tartine Bread

Over the past three days I made three different types of bread. Each bread had its own failures and successes. None of them were perfect, but none of them were bad either. They all need work and I learned a lot. Luckily, we had a friend from out of town to help us taste all of the breads.

The first bread to be ready to eat was the More Sour Sourdough from Wild Yeast. As the temperature in my house is not ideal (even though the bread was rising in the oven with a pot of boiling water), I increased each of the rising times by about 1/3 and I chose the refrigerator option for the bread. I made one big mistake that came close to ruining the loaf. I used the "poke test" to try to determine if the bread had risen enough when it came out of the refrigerator. The poke test involves poking a small indentation into the bread with a finger; if the bread rises back up, it's not proofed enough. If it remained indented, it needs to proof longer. Anyway, the bread seemingly failed the poke test so I let it sit out for a few hours. The dough became softer as it warmed to room temperature and it ended up sticking to the banneton in such a way that I had to reshape the dough and let it proof again for a few hours. I think that if I had taken it out of the oven for about 20-30 min and then baked it, the bread would have come out a bit better. As it was, it was a bit dense but pretty nice, especially with brie while warm or toasted with brie in the morning.

Crumb

The crumb is still obviously far too dense, probably from the reshaping with not enough re-rising and not enough steam at the initial part of the bake. I will get it right one of these days. The crust is problematic. Although it is nice and crunchy, it has that serious dappled/multi-colored look too it which indicates that something went wrong. Probably because the dough re-rose. I think this might be the change in temperature from rising in the refrigerator (post being shaped) and then rising again at a warm room temperature.

Crust

The second bread that I made was a 70% finely-ground white whole wheat modified from Bread Cetera's Pain de Campagne. I changed the rising times, increased the hydration slightly (to compensate for the whole wheat) and replaced 70% of the flour with white-whole wheat. I thought this would make a whole wheat version of the exceptional bread i baked all through my senior year at my alma mater. Something did not quite work. The bread was reasonably light, but not as flavorful as I had hoped and it also had the small even air-bubbles of the my version of Peter Reinhart's Whole Wheat Hearth Bread instead of the large irregular holes of my original attempts at Pain de Campagne. I am not sure if this is because it was a 70% whole wheat bread or whether I did something else incorrectly in the process. I may try again with a 50% whole wheat or similar at some point.

Crust

 The crust was nice, but the crumb was just...wrong. I am not sure. I think I might need to add more water and try a different shaping technique. Thoughts will be forthcoming.

Crumb

 

The final bread was the crown of the bunch, although not a polished gem by any stretch of the imagination. This was the Country Loaf from Tartine Bread. Once again, this book is absolutely incredible. I finished reading it this weekend in between doing other things and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Anyway, the bread had a few problems in the process of making it, including (I think) adding too much levain, having to leave it longer than intended and changing the temperature during the initial bulk fermentation, and extreme trouble during the shaping process. Worst, I don't have a combo cooker, so I improvised with my stone and an upside-down angel cake pan. The angel cake pan was not nearly large enough, as it turns out, for the way the dough wanted to oven spring, and obviously hampered the oven spring. On the other hand, the dough was moist and flavorful and the crust was wonderful and crunchy.

Crust

Crumb

The crumb has lovely irregular holes, but obviously the bread did not have enough oven spring (because of my faux-pas with the cake-pan), but I can see the potential for this bread. I am very excited. I think this bread is going to be my new wonderful go-to artisan loaf. I found that I have a large broth pot that can be overturned and put in the oven which should allow for enough room for the bread to expand while I look for a good and cheap combo cooker.

In the process of making this bread, I realized that part of the reason that my breads have such uneven oven spring is that they really are not getting enough steam. The home oven is meant to vent steam and it's good at it. My oven at my alma mater was designed to vent steam, but it was really awful at it, which meant that the bread could be steamed much better in that oven than my home oven (hence some of the problem with early loaves). So, except for baguettes and pizza, I will now try the upside-down broth-pot method over my stone to see if I can accomplish better steaming. Results forthcoming.

One other thing I realized making this bread is that my approach to bread baking is not very systematic. At school, things worked about 80% of the time by either fluke or beginner's luck and so I just kept trying new things. When I was having trouble shaping the Tartine Country Bread, I complained that I needed a baker to hang around in our kitchen for the day and help troubleshoot, or at least someone who made successful bread. My mom mentioned that a number of her friends could make one great loaf, but that's all they did. She reminded me that most people perfect a loaf and stick with it. I have never done this. So, my new approach will be to perfect one loaf at a time, starting with the Tartine Loaf (while making the amazingly successful pizza dough in between). When I have perfected the loaf, I will move on. Wish me luck!