Crazy Day of Baking Tartinish Breads

ich bin so satt,
ich mag kein Blatt.

My mother-in-law is a wonderful cook.  But she objects loudly whenever you visit, and she offers another bite, and you say, "No really, I couldn't, I'm stuffed."

"What!" she exclaims, "Turkeys are stuffed!  Ducks are stuffed!  People are not stuffed."  Inevitably, this causes a giggle or two from family members who are sitting at the table, and out trots the little German verse from The Brother's Grimm tale, replete with much bleating: "Meh! Meh!"

The correct term, in German, appears to be satt, and it is related to the English word "sated".  And as the fable indicates, no one is ever sated for long.  The English word "replete" works well in this context, although it is never used this way any longer in conversation (you never hear the words "No thank you, I am replete").  I like the word, though, because it reminds me of "repeat".

Yesterday I really baked too much bread for our household.  And last night before I slept, I was saying to myself, "I couldn't eat another bite."

Sure, I may have gorged myself on bread yesterday, but today I reach for more bread, and I know that soon I will have to repeat the enjoyable task of making more.


I did manage to make one loaf out of the seven that I baked that looks decent.  It was my first attempt at making the Tartine Country Loaf, Chad Robertson's master recipe from "Tartine Bread."  I'll save that for the next posting, though, because I want to mention more about the book.  Here I will simply deal with some of the experimental failures.  They were all made at the same time.

A Tartinish Sourdough Spelt Loaf baked on the barbecue

I decided I would make several loaves in the Tartine style, although I wasn't about to follow Robertson's recipes.  Oh no, I was going to strike off on my own (without really knowing what I was doing yet).  What I really wanted to do was use up some spelt flour that I had purchased by mistake: it was not whole grain, but a "light" spelt.  I had 559g of it, and I mixed with it 200g of whole wheat flour and the rest was all purpose flour (241g).  Obviously, this is not a recipe from Tartine Bread, and the baking method I used was not Tartine.

The dough was really jiggly and fragile and certainly would have been much better if I had baked it in a dutch oven like the Tartine loaf should be.  But I don't have one of those items, the casserole dishes were busy, and my wife needed the kitchen: so to get out of her way, I decided to see if it would work on the barbecue as a free form loaf atop the firebrick I've put on the grill.

I won't go into further details  of how it was made.  Why bother?  I will eat a couple of pieces, but the chickens will get most of it.

The bread burned badly on the bottom.  Even when you cut off the bottom, the scent lingers.  Otherwise, this would have been a pretty good bread, I suppose.

A Tartinish Whole Wheat loaf with Figs and Almonds

This is also not a recipe from Tartine Bread.  I was going to make the olive bread, but I didn't have the ingredients at hand.  I did, however, have 2 cups of almonds and a package of dried figs, and I thought they might go together.  It is an experiment.

 

I did q30min folds for 3 hours in some mixing bowls, side by side with the spelt dough.

This loaf wasn't divided.  I was baking so much bread that I had run out of baskets.  The only basket I had left was too long for a half dough, so I didn't divide the dough when I should have, and simply baked it as a double loaf.

But I put it in the basket wrong-side up.

When I barbecued the bread, it didn't retain its shape.  It also got a little dark on the bottom.  Very hard to regulate the temperature in a barbecue.

The finished loaf is a bit like the Titanic: it wants to crack in the middle.

It does taste all right, but it is missing something.  Some herb -- I don't know which -- would have improved this bread.  Maybe fennel seeds.

 
A couple Tartinish 100% Whole Wheat Breads made in the wrong pots

I tried to repeat the last success I had, with a 100% whole wheat bread made with 100% sourdough.  I am sure that these loaves will taste fine, but because I tried to squeeze them into a too-tiny casserole dish for the final baking, they are quite malformed.

Got to get me one of those cast iron dutch ovens that Robertson suggests.  I hope Lodge Cast Iron gives him a kickback on all the dutch ovens that have been sold because of his book.

Notes to Myself

• Don't ever say you are "stuffed" with bread.  Instead, say you are "sated".  Or "replete".  And expect to eat more soon.
• Bad idea, barbecuing bread, unless maybe you put a baking stone on top of those firebricks...too bad you recently broke your third baking stone.  Probably it broke because you are mistreating them by putting them on the barbecue...
• It is fun to unwind after a hard day at work, by taking a day off to bake bread.  It is such a treat because I don't have to do it every day, like bakers do.  I imagine that one can become satiated on too much baking, too.