There seems to be some confusion when making tartine loaves. Namely 'Autolyse'. The books seem to suggest that a long Autolyse with the leaven is fine. Not so! I think this confusion has led to much misunderstanding and many disastrous bakes.
Please read the following article where Chad himself walks you through the steps. Including autolyse without the leaven.
http://tartine-bread.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/guest-baker-chad-robertson.html
Thanks so much for researching and posting this, Lechem. It certainly clarifies a lot of things (and gets one all excited again about high hydration bread!).
It doesn't matter if it's 30 min or all night, the starter may go into the autolyse. Didn't sound right to me hence the search and the discovery with Chad doing his own recipe and clearly stating if the autolyse is long the starter should not be included. It was my duty to make this known considering many love tarting loaves but find it difficult to get a success.
High hydration here we come!
Abe, what a find!
This information REALLY helps me understand some of these processes much better. Thank you so much (you too Chad).
Jim
When Chad walks you through it himself with the aid of a third party. I think the book just isn't clear on this particular point.
While this is a great link I have to caution this notion of warm for autolyse. Reading what Chad has to say I can derive that he has a true understanding of dough strength and how fermentation plays a crucial role and because of this I have a new found appreciation of this new-skool baker. Not all fours are suitable for an autolyse it really depends upon enzyme activity and gluten strength. The stronger the flour the longer the autolyse it can withstand. As soon as you hydrate flour it begins degrade. Enzymes are temperature dependent and once you start pushing the upper limits of temperature, activity can become unwieldy. Following the teachings of my master, Piergiorgio Giorilli, I would not recommend an autolyse be done above 20 degrees Celsius.
In terms of chemistry, the purpose of an autolyse is to reduce the dough so that one can counterbalance the oxidation brought about through fermentation. If you reduce the dough too much you might end up with a flat loaf!
For the further insight. And as important. No use getting everything else right but the dough has degraded. I'm doing one of his recipes taking all this into account.
does not include levain or salt and his knowledge of how baker's math and percents are supposed to work is also less than desired or correct but his bread is just killer and that is all that counts. If he would have spent some time on TFL these issue would never have come to light or been an issue. He is still the bread god he always was for sure along with PR, JH, and Forkish even though they all have their idiosyncrasies as we all do.
Their books should be tested and passed by us folks on TFL. So we can all bounce ideas off each other and all too often it just needs a different approach and a fresh outlook. Tartine is great and now perhaps many can come back to it after having previously failed or found his recipes difficult to follow. His book is not clear but on this website he apparently does things differently.
over time as has his bread - for the better..