Hydration in Cook's Illustrated sourdough recipe
(I would've asked the folks at Cook's Illustrated / America's Test Kitchen this question but I didn't see any way of doing so for a non-subscriber.)
I bought a copy of Cook's Illustrated All-Time Best Bread Recipes. Very good book, in general. But unless I'm doing my math wrong, their recipe for "24-Hour Sourdough" calls for a 57.6% hydration, which seems crazy low to me.
Here are the ingredients:
Sponge:
½ cup (4.5 oz.) starter*
6-8 tablespoons (3 - 4 oz.) water
1 cup (5 oz.) flour
Dough:
Entire sponge, plus:
1½ cups water
4¾ cups (23.75 oz.) flour
2½ tsp. salt
Starter = *3 cups (24 oz.) water + 4½ cups (22.5 oz.) flour, i.e. 106.7% hydration
So for the final dough, I come up with:
Flour: 2.18 oz. (from the starter) + 5 oz. + 23.7 oz. = 30.93 oz. total
Water: 2.32 oz. (from the starter) + 3.5 oz. (assuming 7 tbsp. from the sponge) + 12 oz. = 17.82 oz. total
Which gives me 57.6% hydration.
Is that right? Isn't that way low? Am I missing something?
So sorry--I was trying to respond on my tablet yesterday and the server repeatedly got hung up.
I tried to make a Cook's Illustrated bread recipe a few months back--from one of their emails--and the dough was very very dry. On paper, I sensed something was off, and I was right. I added a few healthy splashes of water to get dough closer to a workable hydration, but since I didn't measure, have no idea how much additional water I added. My bad, I know.
But it did leave me with a great deal of skepticism about the accuracy of CI's technique. They advertise themselves as an organization that takes a very scientific approach to cooking/baking. I've always pictured them as a cadre of culinary school grads, but now I seriously doubt that, as I've had other recipes go wrong. And to give the measurements in volumetric units doesn't seem very professional to me.
I admit to having become a cookbook snob--I will only purchase a bread book if the recipes are in weight measures.
So...you're not the only one.
Funny thing is, they do give weights, albeit in ounces. Maybe they just mathematically converted the volume measurements without checking to see if that's what the ingredients actually weighed. But as you say, they make a point of being very exact about things, so that's hard to believe.
i'm dyslexic. It all looks jumbled up to me.
Then why reply?
all i'm saying is I work in grams but see below all the work I've gone and done with converting and working it out.
I have noticed when doing a very long pre-ferment that it effectively chews up some of the flour and replaces it with liquid. i.e. 5 oz of water and 5 oz of flour seems to turn into 6 oz liquid and 4 oz flour, effectively. My usual sandwich bread recipe needs an extra oz of flour to get the right texture if I do it with a pre-ferment.
So, assuming it loses you about an ounce of flour and gains an ounce of liquid, that pushes you up to a reasonable 63%-ish hydration.
I've never read anywhere about the flour-liquid ratio being affected that way, so I have nothing to corroborate my theory.
The liquids and solids may separate, if you don't stir them, but I don't see how a long pre-ferment can alter the ratio of liquids to solids. Maybe what you mean is that the pre-ferment behaves more like a liquid. I wondered that myself.
I always assumed that the pre-ferment had the yeast eating up the carbohydrates (so less flour) and producing waste products (so more liquid). The pre-ferment, after 12 hours, always looks runnier than what I start with and I've noticed a tactile difference in the dough for a recipe where I do or don't use a pre-ferment.
I can't find anything to back it up - it's based on what appears to happen. I could be confusing it with the flour getting fully hydrated, but the yeast have to be eating/pooping out something...
First problem: there is no starter or sponge listed among the dough ingredients.
How odd that Cook's Illustrated would sell a book of bread recipes and not give the ingredients in baker's percentages.
Sorry, I was trying to summarize the recipe. It calls for the sponge, which includes 4.5 oz. of the starter, and the additional ingredients listed under "dough." I've edited the post to try to make that clear.
Why don't you give the entire recipe, omitting the volume (cup) measurements?
OK, I don't have the book in front of me, but I'll post it here as soon as I can. But basically, it was, make the starter, make the sponge, then make the dough.
SPONGE
starter: 127.58g
water: 85g - 113.4g
flour: 141.75g
Dough:
water: 340.2g
flour: 673.31g
salt: 12.5g
And now for hydration (if I have converted correctly that is)....
flour: 63.79 + 141.75 + 673.31 = 878.85g
water: 63.79 + 99.2 (medium for sponge) + 340.2 = 503.19g
503.19 / 878.85 = 0.5726
0.5726 x 100 = 57.26% Hydration
Close to what I got. Still sounds wrong to me. I guess I could try it and see what happens, but I don't like to follow recipes that seem wrong, just to see if they really are. It's just surprising to me because Cooks Illustrated is usually pretty reliable.
1oz = 28.35g.
I have taken your starter as 100% hydration.
I have also taken the medium point for water in the sponge.
Well, the starter recipe calls for the starter, in its final, ready-to-use stage, to consist of 24 oz. of water and 22.5 oz. of flour (they use ounces, not grams). So it's hydrated at about 106.7%.
I also took the medium point for the water in the sponge.
give me a few minutes to wrap my brain around that.
brb.
Abe, wait for him to post the complete recipe before making unwarranted assumptions and inferences.
Just been working it out then saw your post. My final answer is bearing in mind what I've got to go on so by no means correct if not the full picture.
Starter = *3 cups (24 oz.) water + 4½ cups (22.5 oz.) flour, i.e. 106.7% hydration
Starter = 680.40g water + 637.88g flour = 106.7% hydration
So far all good.
Now for the difficult bit...
Ok took a while but here it is.
The starter in the sponge is 65.88g water + 61.70g flour. 65.88/61.70 = 106.7% hydration
And now for the final hydration...
flour: 61.7 + 141.75 + 673.31 = 876.76g
water: 65.88 + 99.2 (medium for sponge) + 340.2 = 505.28
505.28 / 876.76 x 100 = 57.63% hydration
that all assumptions on yankeedave's part is correct then yes it does look like a very low hydration bread.
to have a crazy low hydration because of late we bread bakers have been encouraged to work at very high hydrations.
I was making sourdough baguettes at 65% hydration for years - nice open crumb, good flavor (might even have blogged it here years ago) - no need for more water. But lately we are encouraged that only by hitting 80% hydration or greater can we make good bread. Many bakers have bought in to the "wetter is better" school of thought.
So, a little low, but not crazy low.
Also, the high proportion of mature starter used in the sponge will place a good bit of degraded gluten in the mix, raising the effective hydration. How much it is raised is hard to judge - but that will make a dough that feels "wetter" than the theoretical hydration.
Also, the undescribed "flour" (which may be an all purpose type for all we know) will have an effect on the amount of water required. The lower protein in the flour the less water is needed to make a sufficiently hydrated dough.
So, the formula in question does not seem to be completely out of the range of reality. Fortunately, it is a simple one and can easily be adjusted by adding more water during the mix if the dough really seems too dry.
Hope this helps.
Thank you. The recipe did call for APF, sorry for not making that clear.
You should contact them and ask the question on the radio show. It would be interesting to hear what they have to say. They do a nice job of getting the science right but I haven't heard much talk around bread.
I left a message on their radio show voice mail. If they respond, I'll post it here.
http://recipetools.gotdns.com/johnsmags/mags/CI/73/CI-73.html#24-Hour_Sourdough_Bread
So you use the entire quantity of sponge in the dough.
Make the sponge then add the sponge to the rest of ingredients.
As far as the starter goes, I.e. Refreshing with larger quantities and using a fraction of that in the sponge, I'm assuming that is referred in an earlier part of the book.
But looks like that all the sponge goes in.
so 56% and change is pretty low for bread. The first baguette recipe from KA flour I made was 66-67% hydration like Pat's. For white bread now, my low hydration is 72%. 30% whole grains would be 75% hydration, 50% whole grains would be 80% hydration 75% whole grains would be 85 % hydration and 100% whole grains would be 90% hydration on the low side. The higher hydration not only makes for a more open crumb but faster ferment and proofing times, better and more complex flavor and more sour too. Yeast and LAB both love the wet but LAB love it more it seems. Oddly, my bagel recipe hydration has gone down to 53% hydration from 58%
You need 72% hydration to do half decent slap and folds without having to slap twice for every fold:-) so the gluten development method can also dictate the hydration.
White bread at 70% hydration is a nice hydration if you aren't used to wet dough.
Happyt baking
Is equal to a 66% hydration dough in the UK
How do you figure that, Abe?
That was a 66% hydration dough. Here in the UK it is very manageable and quite slack. But when she made it it was VERY dry. We upt it to 71 and it looked more like it.
This was the method...
Keep back 20g water to wet the salt and make dough with the rest.
Normally when I do this I can still incorporate all the flour even though the dough is a bit dry. After 40min I add the salt plus the 20g water to help distribute all the salt.
But at this stage she couldn't even get all the flour incorporated. Much dryer than the UK.
So we increased the dough to a final 71% and carried on as normal and the final dough looked like what I would get with 66%.
If that makes any sense.
Usually when making bread she has to adjust the hydration. Don't know why that should be. But difficult to tell if not making it yourself. Don't see why it should be any different. I'm not convinced hydration should change where one is.
I was saw a King Arthur rep demo several doughs all at the same hydration by weight. The difference was the amount of gluten in the various flours. The cake flour was almost soup while the strongest in terms of gluten was like Play dough. Canada flours are typically stronger in their gluten than US or UK flour.
My father always directed me to bring home Robin Hood flour for his bread because it came from Canada and had stronger gluten and gave a better rise to the bread
Charles