I am so happy that people have posted that they had problems with Tartine. This is my third time making the country bread and it just doesn't feel right, literally. Here is what I got, or better, don't get...
- The autolyse, including putting in 50ml of water with 20g, turns my dough into spaghetti and I don't think it ever recovers.
- No problems with the bulk fermentation though it doesn't seem to rise like they expected.
- I am sorry. I like dusting flour. I like throwing it, rubbing it on the counter, and dusting the lovely pillow loaf. I do not like stinging the flour to preserve a massive amount of hydration (what the hell is it in this recipe, 75%?????). It sticks it barely forms. Nope not my dough.
- Worst of all when it comes out of the banneton. Usually this loaf falls flat as a pancake. Very disturbing indeed.
Luckily it comes out pretty good, no oven burst like I discovered with the 1-2-3 loaf but not bad. And good holes inside, but again, too much work for big holes. I don't like big holes, the spreading butter falls right through them.
It is really a shame that my wife says that this is her favorite kind of bread. We had a wonderful breakfast of nothing but bread, which made us all quite late.
I admit, with a rye NMNF starter, the rye seems to really come through. So I got three different kinds of flour in this loaf.
Anyone else got problems with the infamous/ famous tartine? Next time no autolyse AND throwing the flour all over the place!
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When I read your post I had to laugh. I baked the same loaf today and got the same results as you. I paid close attention to the BF and proof temps and times he uses and matched them as close as I could. In the end, a rather flat loaf that looked overproofed.
In the past I did manage to get it to come out just right, but the planets and stars must have been aligned just right that time.
Next time I'm going rogue and doing it my way.
I've been attempting the Tartine process and just about every variant of it for months to no success. Nothing but over-hydrated, over-proofed pancakes. Either the book was written in the Arctic tundra, or there's something not quite right about the way he describes the passage of time in relation to the fermentation process. Suffice to say, I've had better results from this forum than anywhere else.
Makes things a lot easier to handle since your flour might not be as thirsty as Robertson’s.
As I rambled about a few weeks ago here, no two bakers are alike. And Chad Robertson is more differenter than any of us :-). The man could make a Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie winning loaf out of drywall mud. Kudos to him for trying (in what, 70+ pages is it?) to set it down in print for us mere mortals. Best for beginners to consider the Tartine formulas and processes starting points, the fetchingly pictured products goals. Your journey to them will be unique and different and will require some trials and more than a few learned-from errors. I made the mistake of being drawn into this pastime by his equally mesmerizing as exasperating book nine years ago. My wife wanted to burn it, bless her heart. Tartine Bread really is bewitching, isn't it? Like no other cookbook. Something so San Francisco about it. But it was Jeff Hammelman and Ken Forkish who, among book authors, finally taught me to bake bread. Plus David Snyder, Phil Agnew (Pips), Shao-Ping, txfarmer, Varda, golgi70 and untold other generous TFL bakers. And I cannot omit our host Floyd of course.
So don't lose heart over frustrations with Tartine. It can be done but there are other paths to satisfaction in this pastime that don't involve feeling the need to replicate the dexterity and dough sensitivity of a master like Chad Robertson.
Tom