June 19, 2020 - 4:52pm
Increasing whole wheat in Tartine's Oat Porridge bread
Hi, I want to make the Oat Porridge Bread in Tartine 3, but it's a lot of white flour for me – 500g high-extraction and 500g "medium strong wheat flour" which means a white. Has anyone tried replacing some of the white flour with whole wheat? Or using 1000 grams of high-extraction flour, which would up the whole grains?
Thanks!
chelsea
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Oat porridge is a bran-y and dense addition that needs some white flour in the formula to provide some lift.
If you haven't done so already, try the formula as written (perhaps making one loaf instead of two) to get a base-line experience. Using 50/50 high-extraction/white-four, is the equivalent of 25/75 whole-wheat/white-flour.
Unless you're already a fan of dense whole-grain bread, whole-grain (whole-wheat) is usually something that is best approached gradually.
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Do you purchase high-extraction flour, or do you make your own blend as Robertson suggests, out of 50/50 whole wheat and white flour?
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I'm a big fan of the photography of the T3 book. I got the Kindle editions of TB and T3 when they were on sale for $2.99 each. I liked them so much I bought a hard-copy of each.
I went ahead with using all high-extraction flour. As you predicted I didn't get as high a loaf as I'd like, though not too bad. The dough spread out a lot after the bulk rise and was quite sticky – I assume it either had too much hydration or it needed more strengthening. I will try some adjustments next time.
The outside is softer than my usual crusty sourdough, though I used the same Dutch oven technique (20 minutes covered at 500, 10 minutes covered at 450, 20 minutes uncovered at 450). Could that be due to too-high hydration? The first loaf was proofed at warm room temperature for 2.5 hours. For the second loaf I'm doing a 12-hour refrigerator proofing to see the difference. Will report back once I cut into both!
To answer your question, I don't make my own high-extraction flour, here I used a mix of two different purchased ones - Central Milling Type 85 malted and Maine Grains sifted flour.
Hi Chelsea
Sarah Owen has a great book called Sourdough. In it she has a recipe for a honey oat spelt sourdough. The whole spelt is about a third of the flour. It's a terrific loaf on it's own. But you might want to use it as a guide for using whole wheat picking up on her method, hydration, etc and comparing it to that Tartine recipe. It might help you think through how to adapt away from all white. Just a thought..
The loaf I proofed in the refrigerator for 10.5 hours is a whole different animal. It rose a LOT in the fridge, and sprung up like crazy in the oven. Looks crusty and perfect. Since everything else was the same, I guess the room temperature one was over-proofed because it was hot out today.
Flour with a higher bran content ferments more/faster, due to the enzymes in the bran that convert starch to sugar. Typical compensations/adjustments would be: adjusting hydration, using less starter/levain, and/or shorter bulk-ferment/proof, and/or lower temperatures.
Though at some point, as you inch towards whole-wheat territory, you need a new formula.
You essentially went from ~25% WW equivalent, to ~50% WW equivalent, not a minor step. But that last loaf looks great! That oven spring is pretty good considering all the oat porridge in it.
Interestingly the flatter loaf and the taller loaf didn't seem to have much difference in the crumb or flavor. Not a super open crumb (probably to be expected with the porridge) but really good. Here's a photo.
I have had good luck pushing my Tartine style breads to a higher whole grain percentage with a slightly shorter bench rise and a longer low-temp proofing. Haven't found that the hydration needs to be increased - doughs feel very wet.