Tartine Bread

I wanted to start baking my own bread because of how difficult it is to get a decent loaf of bread that is not loaded with chemicals and preservatives. I started out with some King Arthur Flour recipes available online, and quickly decided I wanted to try my hand at sourdough breads. I followed the instructions over at King Arthur Flour to create a starter, received a little advice from The Fresh Loaf forum, and then decided to buy this book. As others have written, the book is not one that has hundreds of bread recipes in it, although there are actually quite a few. I have baked two loaves from the book -- the Basic Country Loaf, and the same bread with roasted walnuts. The breads have been amazing. And what is perhaps more exciting, the same dough makes fantastic pizza. Is it worth the price? Well, it was to me. It was nice to have a set of instructions to read over a bunch of times before taking the plunge into making my first Tartine loaf. Chad Robertson gives a lot of detail, and quite frankly, the instructions are a bit overwhelming and could do with some serious editing. Not because they are confusing, but because they are very lengthy. There is nothing wrong with lengthy; but I encourage anybody reading this book to sit down at their computer and type up those portions of the instructions that they need to bake the basic country loaf, and then print those out. Otherwise you will find yourself needing to turn pages with sticky hands to figure out what you are supposed to do since the recipe spans many pages, and the book is too beautiful and expensive to get dirty. If you are not familiar with bread baking, but you are willing to commit the time to learning and making this "no knead" bread, you won't be disappointed. But, I would do what I did first, and get a sourdough starter that is working nicely before buying the book. It will only be a huge frustration if you buy the book and never get the starter to work. While he gives instructions for creating a starter, I can't say with certainty that they will work for everybody. You can always try it after you've created your own following the advice from King Arther Flour or another source. The process for the basic loaf boils down to this: Take some of your starter (you can take it straight from the fridge, unfed), and build a levain with it. That just means adding water and flour to it, and letting it sit out on the counter for 12 hours or so. Once the levain is ready (a spoonful of it will float in a bowl of water), you mix the rest of the flour and water and make a very sticky dough, which you will "turn" 4-6 times over the the course of 4 hours. Then you can divide the dough and make pizzas with it, or divide it and shape into loaves which will then "proof" in a bowl or basket, overnight in your fridge. The next morning, you can fire up the oven, and get baking. He suggests the Lodge Combo Cooker, and that is what I purchased here on Amazon. It is basically two cast iron pans where one acts as a lid to the other, and traps the steam generated from the wet dough as it bakes. I have never had a problem with my breads burning on top or on bottom, however, if you bake too low on the stove you may find that the bottoms burn. Baking in the middle rack as suggested, has always given me beautiful loaves. I've "scored" my bread (cut it before baking) with a sharp knife or with kitchen shears. The breads make great grilled cheese, PB&J, toast and that is basically all I have done with them to date. They also taste great fresh out of the oven (well, after waiting a couple of hours). I've added a photo of one of my best tasting loaves yet. You will see that I baked it rather dark. It does not follow any formula in the book though it is based entirely on the book's process using the same ratio of levain to flour, etc. It is just that altered the percentage of All Purpose, Whole Wheat and Whole Rye flours to suit what I had on hand. Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast is also an excellent book with similar baking techniques (i.e., lodge combo cooker) but has both commercial yeast and sourdough recipes which also come out quite amazing.

This book revived my sourdough baking. The instructions are clear and measurements spot on! All of the recipes offered, that I tested were wonderful! The photos make things clear and help to understand the dough. I use this several times a week.

This is a great book with wonderful recipes and procedures.

this book is about making possibly the best bread in the world in your own home. How dare people write a review without themselves attempting to make the bread described in this book? This is the book. This is what I've been missing. I have made Jim Leahey's no knead bread ever since Mark Bittman published it in the New York Times. Good bread, very good. But after a few years, I'm not enthused about it anymore, its lacking something. I tried sourdough... I purchased Ed Wood's " Classic Sourdoughs", good work on sourdoughs but not helpful for my bread making. I tried two different starters, tried bread, tried pizza. It didn't work for me. What Ed Wood lacks in his book is the intricacies, the small details, the tricks that are essential to making that perfect french loaf. Yes this book is about making that perfect french loaf of bread. For whatever reason, the French make the best bread in Earth. The author of this book "Tartine bread" apprenticed with French artisan bakers. Chad Robertson shares his tricks that he has picked up from fifteen years of artisan bread making. Apparently, he makes good bread, his bakery in San Francisco sells out his daily production within one hour of hitting the shelves. Anyways, about the bread, about MY BREAD. I made the bread yesterday, actually I've been in the process of making it for four days. I had an Ed Wood's starter that had been stashed away in the back of my fridge for over a year. It took me three days to reactivate it, with repeated feedings finally got the batch to double in volume two nights ago, so had my starter ready to go (which is cheating because the author describes how to make your own starter from scratch in 3-5 days). On the first day I made an active leaven, then in the evening added this to flour and water and salt to make the dough. I let the dough rise overnight, then prepped it the next day and baked it in the afternoon. Bakes just like no knead bread. The results? Well, it looks pretty much like no knead bread, but when I cut into it, it has a sour smell, but when I taste it, the sour taste is there but not sharp and not unpleasant. The crumb is fantastic and the texture, when you bite into it fresh, is unbelievable. The bread is now a day old, and looks and tastes great, it definitely has more character then no knead bread. My bread is not perfect (who do you know that does things perfectly on the first go?). My dough was a little flat, lacks oven spring. My slashes didn't expand during bake. My dough was tough, lacked extension, when I folded it for final shaping. But I am pretty happy with this new methodology. A lot more involved than no knead bread, but achievable for anyone with the motivation to make a great loaf of bread. If you want to take your no knead bread to the next level this is the book. thanks Chad

I love this book, so well written. That said I'm a culinary trained chef so I have a solid background on the fundamentals. It takes practice, some understanding and of course patience. Making bread using this technique is an all day experience but God damn the bread is so good and you can totally control the level of flavor.. one note this book recommends using a double dutch oven (I bought 2, to cook both loaves at the same time) and you great results. I 've made dozens of loaves now and have the basic country loaf down, but there were plenty of fails. After a few loaves you start to know when the dough is ready to move to the next step. The book talks alot about the need to create steam and the double dutch oven works great for round loaves but I've found with a good really hot baking stone elongated loaves and baguettes can be made in a regular oven with great success. First thing I did was get some metal tape used for duct work and taped over the vent inside the oven this traps the moisture, greatly increasing the steam capture, then use wet towels on a sheet pan on the bottom shelf, it's like a sauna. 2nd let that stone get really hot, it normally takes a good 40mins. Last in the cold months I was having a hard time getting the rise I wanted so I started adding 1T sugar when I added salt and this helped kick start the yeast without compromising flavor. I've had the starter working for over year now. Keep it in the fridge sealed in a mason jar, every couple weeks I dump 3/4 and refeed. I normally don't have enough leaven left over to used. Get hooked, get fat. But a good fat... jk

Chronicle books makes beautiful coffee table books. This one tells Chad Roberts endeavor for the making the best loaf, a very inspiring story. After sampling the book from the library, I bought my own copy. It has been instructive and I look forward to trying the many variations of bread recipes. Unfortunately, the images which can be very instructive when attempting to develop something as complex as sourdough, are treated as decorative elements rather than functional documents to guide the novice bread maker. The critical images lack important details, are of low resolution and rather than using a four color image that can provide more information the images are B&W. I am turning to Claire Saffritz and other youtube bread makers to get more instructive detail.

I just started reading it and it's very engaging right away! I had got my starter going so good, all ready to bake my first loaf... the morning of the Big Day, I turned on the oven to start some biscuits for the kiddos, just to realize a bit later that an oven fire was blazing in the kitchen,...I had my beautiful and active starter in there and it cooked to a giant dough, killing it completely💔. I was devastated beyond words and 💔 all my work was killed instantly. So I started a new starter and ordered this book so that by the time the new starter gets mature again, I will have more knowledge to create a beautiful loaf... I'm on day 2 of my new starter and day 1 of this book and I have high hopes that I'll step into this with more knowledge under my belt... I already have the passion for sourdough, hopefully I can give an update down the road with a completed sourdough loaf. Meanwhile, I'll be reading this already awesome, relatable book... and possibly make something awesome, like these awesome loaves here in Amazon comments section🙌 EDIT: OK, I attempted a new loaf after I got my starter up and running again, although they are not the prettiest cause my shaping needs alot of work but wow do they taste amazing!.. the first loaves tasted great but my house is so cold so I had to proof them in the oven using hot water to make them proof the right way and I also killed THAT starter in the oven😵🥴.. so I said forget it, I'm buying a proofing box! I got the Brod and Taylor proofing proofing box and my second attemt at it went much smoother and I produced the pictured loaves they are so good, I also made the second loaves using the Kitchen Aid and wow, the process is so satisfying! I have a leaven that I just started and I will just keep making loaves until I nail the shaping process! Great book, highly recommend!

I am a big fan of simple sourdough sans commercial yeast and sugar. My preference began as a small child in the '60's with my beautiful grandmother Ora's sourdough rolls. She had a covered crock of it, fragrant with the lovely scent of apples, bubbling away, near her kitchen wood burning stove on a remote 400 acre cotton farm in northeastern Mississippi near Memphis. Elvis country. When the region was finally electrified, other cooks gladly ditched their wood burning stoves for electric ones. Ora (1897-1991) kept hers for breads which she cooked daily for the rest of her active life. Her electric stove sat beside her wood burner. She made the most amazingly fragrant, delicate, tender, fluffy sourdough rolls, seemingly by magic, and in no time. We ate them hot with farm butter and homemade muscadine jelly. They are still the best rolls I'd ever tasted. And guess what? None of her 8 children knows how to make these rolls. She did not make anything else with the sourdough as far as I know. Many times over many years, I tried yet another cookbook's sourdough bread recipe. I don't consider fakes--recipes with yogurt, sourdough with commercial yeast, or sourdough with cups of sugar to feed the sourdough. But not once were the writers of pure sourdough bread confident about their recipes. This was puzzling and disheartening. The best ones warned that the success rate for pure sourdough bread recipe--flour, salt, water -- was iffy. So my random success wasn't just on me. These people don't know what they are doing. Thankfully, I kept the faith. Then the Revolution in Sourdough Bread making came to me and mine when I found this book on Amazon's website in 2017. Thank you from the bottom of my heart Amazon and Chad Robertson! My husband, not a bread man, is in love with this bread. My daughter, a busy prosecutor, also makes it weekly for her fans! After reading this book and making the Country Loaf perfectly on the first try, I've entered a new era in sourdough baking. It's been 5 years since I bought this book and I'm still excited about it! My sourdough starter has aged and has a lovely rich floral/fruity/Tupelo honey scent. I most often use half King Arthur's all purpose and half Great River dark whole rye to feed it. I also use sprouted spelt flour from One Degree and Great River bread flour. The reason my sourdough now turns out perfectly is that Robertson gives his readers exhaustive instructions. Each time I get stuck or have a serious question, I sit down and re-read until I figure out my issue. He is the most chill and detailed craftsman I have ever met in print. These two qualities support his success! One of the main differences between making a commercial yeast loaf and a sourdough loaf is the style of kneading. The yeast loaf does best for me anyway with a lot of hand kneading, or more accurately kneading without any intention of ever stopping until I feel the dough slowly coming together beautifully into its not-so-sticky springy bouncy firm self. It can wear you out! I have machines that can do it but I like the hand made results better. Kneading sourdough in the same way is a big no-no. When you push down on a big ball of sourdough, you force the acculated air out of the dough and successfully flatten it, possibly for good! It may rise a bit on the second rise, but the final it may not rise much at all. Robertson's method explains everything. The photographs are beautfully artisitcic and instructive. And, wonderfully, it costs the baker way less muscle work to make sourdough breads. When your sourdough rises into a fluffy bilious mass of very soft dough, instead of kneading by pushing it away from with the heel of your hand, you delicately and deftly run your hand underneath the dough, grab it with your fingers and then pull upwards ever so gently, trying not to pop any bubbles appearing under the surface. Now, fold the dough, laying it delicately over the top. Voila! This sourdough will rise for you. For those who don't want to read and research to learn, good luck with that! I've been putting meals on the table since childhood and I couldn't have done it without investing time and effort. The rewards have been wonderful. Check out Chad Robertson on YouTube. You may be both humbled and inspired as I have been. I've given you a few tips from this Chef's book. There is so much valuable detail there that I keep mine in the kitchen. I'll leave you with this delicious teaser: Why does Chad Roberston burn his loaves?