Some Breads in the Tartine Style

Photo by Matt Korahais.

 I've been playing around a bit with the bread method described in Chad Robertson and Eric Wolfinger's Tartine Bread (the book is beautiful, by the way, check it out). Robertson's method uses a sourdough leaven in a wet dough--but one a little drier than Lahey/Bittman's no-knead.  The dough is turned three or four times during a long bulk fermentation lasting 3-8 hours, depending on temperature. After the initial mix, the dough gets a 20 minute autolyse before salt and a small amount of water are added in to finish it off.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

The recipe is geared toward two loaves, so each time I baked one in the cast-iron dutch oven and one in the BreadPot. I scored the loaves, but somewhat haphazardly, as the depth of the pots made it difficult for me to get my scoring knife in.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

For the second bake, a walnut pecan golden raisin loaf, the garnish was added after about 40 minutes of the bulk rise, during the first turn.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

I turned the dutch oven into a cloche by turning it upside down and using my skillet as the bottom.

Photo by Matt Korahais. Uncropped!

The crumb was light and airy, well-gelatinized and full of large, irregular holes.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

Photo by Matt Korahais.