Tartine Bread

After several attempts at baking the basic country bread recipe, I realised something wasn't right because all my loaves were coming out pancake styled and nothing like the beautiful loaves in the book. Until one day the Baker enlightened my path and discovered what I (and everyone else who strickly follows recipes) was going wrong. Recipes are meant to be reinvented! When it comes to artisan bread you really have to understand the bread making process. So the problem was the original recipe has too much water. In this wonderful post, the Baker explains exactly what was going wrong and how to fix it.

After testing out my grandfather's amazing stone oven, I tripled the original recipe, plus the extra amount of flour suggested by the Baker and mixed in almost 400gr of organic seeds. The rest of the process went smoothly... exactly as discribed in the book, though I did give the dough some extra turns. 

I don't know if the secret is in the dough or in the oven, but I was astonished at how fast it baked: 15 minutes! I saw it rise and crisp, right before my eyes. In Lisbon, the baking process took more than an hour.

Nine beautiful and perfect loaves: crispy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside. 

In the end, it was a scary feeling because I had just realized that I would be very happy as a bread baker...