Tartine Bread from 4SP Films on Vimeo.

Making natural sourdough starter & leaven
This first step is simple

Starter

  1. Make a mixture of 50% all purpose flour and 50% whole wheat flour in a medium size container (about 3-4 cups)
  2. In a small container mix warm water and a handful of the 50/50 flour mix (use your fingers to mix)
  3. Place a clean cloth over small container and set in a still dark area for 3-4 days
  4. After a hard crust forms you are ready to start "training" the yeast by removing the crust and 80% of the concoction
  5. Add warm water and 50/50 flour mix just like you did day one. This refreshes the batch and feeds the yeast
  6. Each day (or two) refresh the starter in the same way
  7. In about a week your starter is ready

Leaven

  1. This step is done the night before or 4-5 hours prior to making dough
  2. In a small container mix 200g of warm water with 200g 50/50 flour mixture and add 1 tbsp of Starter, mix well
  3. Cover with clean cloth and set aside in warm still area
  4. Mixture will double in size


Making the dough
This step takes just a few minutes to mix up. Most of the time it just sits on the counter doing it's natural thing.

Dough

  1. Put 700g of warm water in a large plastic container
  2. Add 200g of leaven (make sure it floats)
  3. Add 1000g flour. You can choose the % of whole wheat vs all purpose flours. 70% is a good starting point (700g ww + 300g all purpose)
  4. Mix with hand until all flour is wet
  5. Let sit for 20-30min (for ww flour to absorb water)
  6. Add salt water mixture (50g warm water + 20g sea salt)
  7. Mix well with hand by squishing dough between fingers
  8. Cover loosely and let sit for at least 2 hours at room temp
  9. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks


Forming the loaf
Whenever you are in the mood for fresh bread just cut off a piece of refrigerated dough and form your favorite loaf or pizza dough.

Loaf

  1. Cut off a grape fruit size of dough and place in floured bowl (use the 50/50 flour mix)
  2. Coat both sides of dough in the flour and begin forming the loaf as described in the video
  3. Place an ample supply of corn meal on a pizza peel or wood surface
  4. Place the formed loaf on the corn meal with face up
  5. Let loaf rest at room temperature for at least 45 min, and up to a few hours
  6. You may want to cover with clean cloth if the room is drafty


Baking bread on a pizza stone in oven
This technique requires just a pizza stone and a broiler pan. The oven must be moist for the first 10-20 min of baking to produce the crusty exterior.

Baking on pizza stone

  1. Pre-heat oven to 450F
  2. Place pizza stone on a rack about 1/4 from the top
  3. Place the broiler pan on a rack at the bottom 1/4 of the oven
  4. Let stone heat for at least 20 min
  5. Heat up a cup of water
  6. Lightly flour top of loaf and make a cut or two across loaf with a sharp knife (this give the bread a direction to expand during baking)
  7. In one smooth/quick move, open oven door, deliver loaf to the pizza stone using the pizza peel, and dump the cup of hot water into the broiler pan, and close door. One note of caution: If your oven was a glass door- do not splash water on the glass- it may break the glass)
  8. Bake for 30 minutes
  9. Remove with the pizza peel and let rest on a cooling rack


Baking bread in dutch oven on grill
This is the better technique of the two and will bake up in your oven just as well. I choose the grill in the summer to keep the heat outside, and the oven in the winter to warm the house and make it smell great. A dutch oven will not only steam your bread to give it that great crusty outer surface, but will do it by using its own moisture. That means you also get a lighter airier bread, more like the way a professional oven would bake it.

Dutch Oven

  1. Preheat grill to 450F w/lid closed
  2. Place dutch oven w/lid in center of grate. Turn the center burners that are under dutch oven to a lower setting and the outer burners on high
  3. Pre-heat dutch oven for at least 20 minutes
  4. Lightly flour top of loaf and make a cut or two across loaf with a sharp knife (this give the bread a direction to expand during baking)
  5. In one smooth/quick movement, open grill top, remove dutch oven lid using a oven mitt, using your hands- place loaf lightly into dutch oven (be careful not to touch anything that's HOT), using oven mitt place lid back on dutch oven and close grill top
  6. Bake for 15-20 min
  7. Remove the dutch oven lid and continue to bake for another 10-15 min, for a total bake time of 30 min
  8. Using oven mitts, turn dutch oven oven and remove bread
  9. Place on a cooling rack


Sourdough bread chicken sandwich
As you can see the bread comes out very professional and can be sliced up for sandwich bread. One trick to slicing is to tilt the bread up when cutting, so your cutting through the harder bottom at an angle.


"Day old" bread
Most days there will be leftover bread. Even when we place it in a paper bag or try other methods to keep it fresh, it just gets "day old." Here is one option, toast is another, and so on...


Here's where my bread trail started. For years I have been baking a loaf of bread here and a loaf there. The more healthy I made it the worse it came out- like door stops:) We even bought a zojirushi bread machine a few years ago, thinking we could make great bread quick and easy. The bread was OK, but still took hours for the machine to process 1 loaf. I still found myself going to Crossroads Bake Shop when I wanted a great loaf of bread. Their crusty breads are the benchmark I was comparing mine to (not even close).

The tides change when Susan bought me the book Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson (she finds the coolest stuff). And it relit my quest to make great bread. Well, after reading the book, and learning how easy it was to make, I baked my first batch. Took the whole freaking day. There was no way I was going to invest 10+ hours into each loaf of bread. That's when I started doing some research that led to this current technique. Bottom line is that I can always reach in the frig and grab some dough and make a pizza in 10 minutes. Or form a loaf of bread when I get home from work and have it with dinner that night. It's fast and super easy, and has the texture and taste I was looking for. Plus just 3 ingredients: water, flour and salt. And I can adjust the whole wheat factor to satisfy almost any pallet.

Why Bread
Bread has been a staple of life. Just like with most food, the original versions are a lot more healthier than the modern day over processed ones. Bread is no different. Today people commonly believe that a loaf of Wonder Bread is just fine. But the fact is eating breads like that will raise your blood sugar levels just the same way a table spoon of sugar would. Yep, they have striped way all the healthy layers of the grain that contain oils and vitamins. Even the fiber of those layers are needed for proper digestion. So what can we do about this? That's easy, just don't buy processed white bread. And instead only buy fresh whole grain types of bread. But if you want to go even one level higher- try making your own. It's not as hard or time consuming as you may think. You will have total control of every ingredient that goes into it. Plus the natural fermentation in our recipe is great for digestion.
Tell us about your bread
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