Tartine Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

I tried Tartine whole wheat sourdough bread again. The recipe was adapted from Chad Robertson's 'White-Wheat Blend' in Tartine Book No. 3 and Maurizio's '90% Whole Grain Sourdough' recipe in foodtravelthought blog.

I had been struggling with baking this bread from Tartine Book No. 3 and had hit the wall a while ago, but this Maurizio's modified recipe was totally eye-opening and helped me a lot to break through the wall. 

To make high-extraction flour, I sifted Community Grains 100% Whole Grain Hard Red Winter Wheat Flour to get rid of 30% bran out of it. But I miscalculated the weight of bran to remove, so it was actually 83% high-extraction flour instead of 70-75% one which Chad Robertson suggested in Tartine Book No. 3. To adjust the balance between whole grains and white flour, I added extra 10% bread flour to the flour mixture (with just a wild guess), so the total ratio of bread flour was 20%.   

I used some of the bran to coat the shaped loaf, so the final loaf must contained more whole grain ratio, but it was hard to figure out how much percentage of whole grain ended up in the loaf actually - perhaps somewhere around 65-70%. It would require very complicated calculation. My solution this time was from a pretty rough estimate. I should take more time to calculate the ratio precisely next time. 

The oven spring was not so dramatic, but the inside crumbs have nice holes which I had never been successful with before. I used an oval basket for proofing the loaf, but somehow it ended up to be a round-shaped when baked. 

The crumb was surprisingly soft for a loaf with high-percentage of whole grains.

This is highly recommended recipe for anyone who has been struggling with the original Robertson's recipe. I am very happy with the result.