Tartine recipe

The original recipe is by Chad Roberstson 

Leaven:

The day before baking I prepare the leaven. I make a 100% mature (50% water and 50% flour) starter. When it increased enough I move it to the refrigerator for the night. Next morning I take it out. To have a lively leaven I add 20 grams of water and 20 grams of flour.

I check the leaven; in a small bowl with lukewarm water I drop 1 teaspoon of leaven. When it floats it’s ready, when it sinks I have to wait till it’s ready.

Dough: 

350 grams plus 25 grams lukewarm water
100 grams leaven
500 grams white all purpose flour *
10 grams salt


* the original recipe has 450 gr all purpose flour and 50 gr whole wheat flour

Mixing/kneading:

Weigh 350 grams of 26˚C water and pour it into a large mixing bowl.  Add 100 grams leaven and stir it to disperse. Add 500 grams of flour in the bowl and mix thoroughly by hand until you do not see any bits of dry flour. 

Autolyse:

Let the dough rest for 25 to 40 minutes.  Don’t skip the rest period.  It allows the protein and starch in the flour to absorb the water, swell, and then relax into a cohesive mass.

Salt: 

After the dough has rested, add the 10 grams of salt. Incorporate the salt into the dough by squeezing the dough between your fingers. I added the extra 25 grams of water in little bits at a time. After a bit was incorporated I added the next bit.

Folding and bulk fermentation:

Fold the dough on top of itself in a container. I made my hands wet with some water to prevent from sticking to the dough. Grab with your hands under the dough and lift it out of the container.  Carefully stretch the dough in the air. Be gently to avoid pressing gas out of the dough. Fold right side over left side and do the same with top and bottom. Place it back in the container and cover with plastic.

I folded 4 times each half hour. Let it rest for the last hours. It depends on the temperature in your kitchen how long you need.

Pre shaping:

Pull the dough out of the container onto a floured work surface. Stretch the dough to a square. Fold like an envelope; make sure the floured side stays on the outside.

Turn the dough with the seam side on the work surface. Shape into a ball. Cover the ball and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Final shaping:

For final shape, don’t use flour, the ball needs to get a bit of grip on the work surface and close the seam while you keep on turning it. Cup your hand. Gently shape it into a ball.

Proofing:

I placed the loaf in a banneton, floured with rye flour. Placed it in a plastic bag and let it proof for 1 hour.

Retard proofing:

I placed the bag in the refrigerator for the night. I take the bag out of the refrigerator and leave it to warm on the counter. Or I take the bag out and put it directly in the oven.

Steaming:

I can use a flowerpot to place over the loaf or place a cake form with lava rocks in water under the baking stone.

Baking stone:

I use a baking stone.

Next morning/bakingday:

I pre-heated the oven to 260˚C and prepared for steaming. I need a long time to pre heat my oven, it must be sizzling hot. Just before the oven was hot enough I took the bag out of the refrigerator. Placed the loaf on a lightly floured wooden peel and scored the loaf.

The tricky part was removing the hot flowerpot and placing the loaf a quick as possible back in the oven. Placed the flowerpot on top and closed the oven.

Baking:

The first 20 minutes I baked the loaf with steam in the flowerpot. The last 20 minutes without steam and without flowerpot and parchment. I leave the loaf in the oven until it is brown enough. Then I leave the loaf another 5 minutes with a cracked door and the oven off.

Cold oven:

Chad Robertson uses starting the first loaf in a cold oven.

Cool:

Let the loaf cool on a wire rack. 

Lucky dragon tails

For many people dragons bring luck and prosperity. In most Thai temples you find dragons. We live near a big Buddhist temple. Here you find many dragon figures in gold and silver. There is a bridge shaped like a dragon, a road in dragon shape and also the river you see from the Temple hill, looks like a dragon tail.
When I saw the beautiful dragon tail Susan had made, of course I wanted to make them too. They look so delicious I’ll think they will bring luck. This time I made smaller buns for the tail. But, next time I will make bigger ones.

Garlic bread

This month the Bread Baking Babes bake Dan’s Garlic Bread, and of course I joined them.

We love garlic; we probably eat it every day. Living in Thailand it is a daily ingredient in food, together with chili and onion. During March; harvest of garlic, you see something amazing on the roads here. Pickup trucks are pilled up, as high as 4 meters with garlic in the back. From a far distance you can see and smell garlic coming up. All villagers are helping to collect the garlic from the fields and spreading them to dry. Everywhere you go there is garlic. So, we like the choice of the Bread Baking Babes for Dan’s Garlic Bread.Before I started I had a look at the blog of Natashya; host of this month BBB.
and Lien and also the blog of Susan
Susan wrote about all the great things to do with the delicious caramelized garlic cloves. I immediately cleaned more cloves than I needed for the loaves.

Hope you never have to use this

I burned my finger while making coconut macaroons. The smallest thought kept me away from awareness on what I was doing. Normally I would have taken an ice cube and most of the pain would disappear after a while (more than 10 minutes). But this time I immediately put my finger in the flour bag. I held my finger for 10 minutes in the flour. The pain went a way quicker than with my usual ice cube and there was nothing to see.

Why I acted like this? Yesterday we got this mail;

“Once I was cooking some corn and stuck my fork in the boiling water to see if the corn was ready. I missed and my hand went into the boiling water....

A friend of mine, who was a Vietnam vet, came into the house, just as I was screaming, and asked me if I had some plain old flour...I pulled out a bag and he stuck my hand in it. He said to keep my hand in the flour for 10 minutes which I did. He said that in Vietnam , this guy was on fire and in their panic, they threw a bag of flour all over him to put the fire out...well, it not only put the f ire out, but he never even had a blister!!!!

SOOOO, long story short, I put my hand in the bag of flour for 10 minutes, pulled it out and had not even a red mark or a blister and absolutely NO PAIN. Now, I keep a bag of flour in the fridge and every time I burn myself, I use the flour and never ONCE have I ever had a red spot, a burn or a blister!
*cold flour feels even better than room temperature flour.

Miracle, if you ask me. Keep a bag of white flour in your fridge and you will be
happy you did. I even burnt my tongue and put the flour on it for about 10 minutes
and the pain was gone and no burn. Try it!

BTW, don't run your burn area under Cold water first, just put it right into the flour for 10 minutes and experience a miracle”

I received this mail from a friend and I have no name of the one to thank for sharing.

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Rewena paraoa (Maori bread)

Bread Baking Babes baked Rewena Paraoa in March. Of course I joined them and started with the Rewena; it looked ok. The second day the bubbles came, but we needed to go out for a few hours. The temperature during the day in our house is between 32 ºC and 38 ºC. When we came back I went to see the Rewena. It smelled awful, like vomit (sorry).

Because we went for a family trip to Holland I had no time to try this again. But, this week we came back and today is my second attempt. Yesterday I started the Rewena and it looks and smells ok. I placed the Rewena in the refrigerator during the night and this morning it was full of bubbles and still smelled ok. Making salt rising bread (Bread Baking Day #39) with boiled potatoes gives a cheesy smell, so I read. It’s a strange but good smell.

Brown Soft Semolina Sourdough

We opened our last package of cheese, the most delicious cheese; Beemster cheese from the Netherlands. This mature cheese asks for dark brown bread.

Today I will bake Soft Semolina Sourdough, but this time a brown version. It’s a soft bread and very tasteful. I’m happy with the roasted malt I found. At first I used molasses, it gave the bread color but also the taste of sugar. Roasted malt gives the bread color and a nice flavor. Never use more than 5% otherwise the bread will not rise. We have a lot of rain these days and it's not rainy season yet. This was good for the garden en the water tanks. Often when we have heavy rain and hard wind the electricity goes down. Today was such a day. I wanted to make a small loaf and also like to knead the dough by hand.

Sourdough Ciabatta Bread

Summer has arrived; temperature is rising and the dough is falling.

The first time I made these Ciabatta rolls it was March 1. In the North of Thailand, were we live, we have 3 seasons; summer, rainy season and winter. March 1 is the beginning of summer, and it was! Last week we needed to use our thick and heavy blanket for the cold nights. But, this all changed on March 1. The first night we only needed our sheet and a duvet in the early morning. What a strange feeling after a few months of cold nights.

I decided to make Sourdough Ciabatta Rolls. I found recipes using yeast, but I’m affected with the “sourdough virus”. I have noting against yeast, but I really enjoy feeding the sourdough every day and I can’t wait to use it in a recipe. I had already fed the sourdough to an amount of 610 grams! I never had seen so much sourdough starter.

Jeffrey Hamelman says: “Ciabatta dough is unique in many ways: First, it is very wet and sticky dough, with often upwards of 80 percent or even higher hydration. This requires some special handling (like locking all the doors so the bakers can’t run for the exits)….”