I’ve spent the last 27 days making two loaves of bread.

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Brian bought me the Tartine Bread cookbook for Christmas this year.  Tartine is a bakery on Valencia in San Francisco and is close to my favorite thing about that city, which is saying quite a lot cuz I heart SF. (Other favorites: El Farolito burritos, Dynamo Donuts, and the entire cocktail menu at Luna Park.)

The basic country bread recipe starts on page 42 and ends on 79.  Yep, for reals.  A basic country bread textbook, essentially.  On January 4th I began making the starter (equal parts water and a 50/50 mix of white and whole wheat flour which you “feed” everyday by discarding 80% of it, and replacing the discarded part with more flour and water, repeat, repeat, repeat til you see signs of life).  By Jan 15th I had done every imaginable Google search variation on “bread making Seattle Tartine recipe tips” and was real close to throwing in the towel.  My culture smelled disgusting and wasn’t doing anything really.  Then I decided to think about some things I read in those 30 recipe pages, 800 times over and over again.  SF is different from where I’m at - especially around this time of year.  More mild… and likely with less moisture in the air.  Also, Tartine probably doesn’t keep their heat at 62 degrees during the day.

So I decided to start feeding the culture with warmer water, using a bit more flour than water, and resting the container on top of a folded kitchen towel - rather than directly on the cold countertop.  Soon enough, things started bubbling and the culture goddamn came to life. 

I probably fed it longer than I had to but I wanted to be sure it was vigorous, as instructed.  It still never rose and fell, like those fancy San Francisco starters… but it did bubble like crazy and started to smell somewhat appealing.  Good enough for me.

On Sunday morning I started the actual baking process.  Making the leaven from the starter, mixing the dough, resting it, shaping it, resting it some more… and by Monday (1/31) after work OMG I finally was ready to bake it.

I included the notes I kept on Sunday and Monday above.  The bulk fermentation and final rises were longer than the recipe instructed so I could 1) sleep and 2) work, respectively.  I think the bread tastes good… no Tartine, but better than decent for my first time.  I especially like the crunchy exterior, for which I must give full props to my badass cast iron dutch oven combo cooker. 

With the left over starter I’ll attempt this again next weekend… starting on Friday night and baking on Saturday before dinner, using resting times closer to what’s in the recipe.  Meantime, maybe this will help out the next person to Google “bread making Seattle Tartine recipe tips.”