Sourdough

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It was on a cold and sunny day when I stumbled over Chad Robertson and his Tartine bread. After I saw his brilliant video on vimeo I had the urge to quit my job and do nothing but baking and cooking. I was always interested in baking bread but beside the sunday “zopf” it was never really worth the effort. Our local organic baker does much better bread than I managed to do. But I had this vision of a very moist and very fragrant bread. Immediately I ordered the book. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. It arrived more or less on christmas. After reading it I was even more convinced to give it a try. Chads bread gets a very long resting time which I find key to good bread. Once I was to tired to bake my “zopf” bread in the evening so I let it sit over the night in a cool place. The next morning I baked it, and was more than pleased with the result. Not only had it a very nice structure, it’s also perfect to have fresh bread on a  sunday morning. Since that day my “Zopf” always gets at least a 10 hours rest.

Short after new year I started with setting up my own starter. After a long 10 days I baked my first bread. I knew it wouldn’t work because there was not enough air in the dough but I gave it a try anyway. As expected the bread did not rise enough but it tasted delicious. I decided to speed thing up and ordered a starter online. I will still try to make my own starter but for now we are more than happy with our little french one.

The result was stunning and we basically spent a whole sunday sitting in the kitchen eating bread.

Tartine bread is a beautiful, inspiring book that teaches you a lot about baking and bread. It’s what if been waiting for, for a long time. So if you like baking and have things to do while your bread is resting go for it – it’s well worth it!

the floating leavenrest
bench restready for the final rise
in the ovenfreshly out of the oven
from the insiderecommendation

If you need more inspiration I recommend starting here:

tartine bread

oh and check the video