Tartine-ish - 77% Hydration in the UK ...

OK, so here we are, living in a slightly damp country where we can really only grow oats and low protein wheats (for the most part). Makes fantastic pastry, but bread... Well, out bread flour is usually augmented with Canadian or some European wheats to boost the protein levels (or additives & enzymes then beaten to hell and back by the Chorleywood process). Even then, it's not quite the same as US/Canadian flours and my attempts at a higher hydration (and others) have met with results resembling ciabatta or basically a pile of glue.

However... I was given a copy of "Tartine" for my birthday a few weeks ago, so I thought I'd give it another go...

The summary - using my usual organic Shipton Mill 12% protein flour (their No. 4) as well as their organic wholemeal basically worked, although the results were somewhat challenging.

This is what I ended up with:

Not my best - far from it... Anyway, you ought to be able to right-click on the image to get the full-size...

And this was inside one of them: (I only waited half an hour as it was getting late)

Taste - good. Smelled more sour that it tasted. Big open crumb structure with those much coveted glossy gaps - by some and a chewy crust.

77% hydration - What I discovered was that Robertson doesn't seem to count the starter in the total make-up of the dough. So with his 75% plus my 100% hydration starter, it actually made what I'd refer to 77%.

I more or less stuck to the country Loaf plan in the Tartine book - however I took 200g of starter directly from my jar in the fridge rather then do a separate build to make the starter. As you can see it worked just fine. I also had  a slight domestic issue towards the end, so the pattys got an extra hour bench rest while I fixed the central heating...

However - essentially this is possible with UK flours.... But it was a bit of a challenge and not one that I'd ever throw at a first-time bread maker!

I took some more photos and videos, so here are more with descriptions...

Start of the journey. I've mixed the starter, water (70% of the water) and flours together. The result is almost pourable at this point. Then its left to autolyze for half an hour. The remainder of the water is mixed with the salt and poured over and mixed in... video below:

This is when adding the salt water - I dissolved the salt in the water then added it in. A little video for you which will demonstrate the consistency at this stage. I had to put the camera (phone) down after 30 seconds to finish it off...

What I then did was the pour it out onto the bench with the idea that I'd leave it on the bench, covered with the bowl while I did the turns/stretch & folds on it, however after pouring it out, I realised I had other stuff to do, so scooped it up into one of the bigger polythene tubs I use for bulk fermentation:

So regular turn/stretch & fold or 3 then repeating this over the course of the next 4-5hours, ending up with:

Not the best of pictures due to the rather foggy tub material, but you should be able to see the rise that's happened during the ferment + stretch & folds.

The putty was almost dough-like at this point .. almost. It was wetter than my ciabatta, but it was time to tip it out, divide and rest it ...

On the bench...

Divided and conquered ... (pre-shape)

Well, almost. At this point, I had to go and fix my central heating which took somewhat longer than I anticipated, so rather than just a 20-30 minute bench rest, it got about 90 minutes... No matter, onward and upward!

I deviated from the book a little at this point and almost managed to do my usual method of shaping a boulle - additional flour helped, but it was still a lot of dough wrangling.. I decided to use cloth lined baskets as this stuff was still a bit too sticky for my liking...

Into the baskets...

and after a couple of hours proofing (covered with heavy linen) - two baskets of very wobbly & bubbly stuff indeed...

I can see now why people plop this into dutch ovens - stops it smearing all over their ovens if nothing else :-)

During the proof, I'd turned the top half of my Rofco on to heat up - I set it for 240°C - my usual setting for the Rofco is 220°C which is plenty hot enough, but I just wanted to make sure, so ...

The technique I decided to use to load them into the oven was to use a big sheet of re-usable silicone parchment. This is how I usually load it anyway - dough onto the sheet, then use a big plywood transfer board to take the sheet into the oven. I remove the sheet to drop the breads directly onto the stone at the point when I open the vents to let the steam out (needs opening the door, but this hasn't been an issue so-far)

Some light scoring - this was still a very soft dough, then into the oven. I thought I took a shot of them in the oven through the open door, but it doesn't look like it. I steamed the oven before and after loading.

And the result - well, see above. This photo:

shows the '77' to the right of 2 of my regular 63% sourdough loaves - which bake to about the same weight (840g or so) 77 is larger due to the bigger bubbles - a bit darker too, due to the hotter oven.

Those other loaves have exactly the same ingredients though - same flour, starter, water and salt - just slightly different quantities and a different technique. Quite amazing that the same 3 basic ingredients can produce two completely different loaves!

So obviously handling very wet dough like this takes more practice - but will I make more? I'm really not sure - however that loaf above went to the shop this morning and it sold - the other one that I'd cut into, I gave 2/3 to a neighbour with instructions to give critical feedback (he's good at that :-) so it remains to be seen.

I do know from the markets I attend that people here really do not like (a) sour bread and (b) bread with big holes in it. The UK has not had a history of this type of bread and while I live in hippy/organic central, they only make up a small proportion of the locals in a very rural place, so this new fangled fancy posh bread hasn't quite reached the masses here - yet. But slowly, one loaf at a time and you never know - and there is a local bakery making something very similar (and I know he started with the Tartine book too - wonder if he'd tell me the hydration & flours he uses...)

If I did decide to make it a regular then I'd need to work out a different way to manage it though. baby-sitting it through the day is not going to happen - I have other stuff to do, but the recent post by panifex_velox was interesting - I'll need a bigger fridge though!

Cheers,

-Gordon