May 4, 2020 - 8:16am
Floured surface in pre/final shaping
Lots of confusing information on this. Some recipes call to dump the dough on the counter with no flour, or clean up the surface from flour prior to final shaping. Some say wet your hands and scraper, some say flour them.
Which technique do you use? I find the dough incredibly difficult to handle after dumping it on the counter. It sticks to my hands, it sticks to the scraper, it's just too sticky! Then I see people picking up their loafs with their bare hands and moving it around and I'm just completely amazed at how they do that. I can't even pick it up to place in the banneton :(
Share
It took me some time to learn this too (and I'm far from perfecting it), but it seems the key to no sticking is a tight gluten network, which you need to develop over multiple stretch & folds. Flour quality is also a factor, but I can get even some non-sticky dough with cheap flour if I just stretch & fold it enough. Over a 2,5 hour bulk fermentation I usually do 5-6, 3-4 if I have better flour.
Then I also need fairly little flour, just a little dusting. Adding water doesn't seem to work as well for me.
Thanks! I actually use flours from Central Milling which are supposed to be of high quality. I think I may just go at it the other way by being very generous with the flour and working my way down, instead of being stingy.
Well, how much flour depends on how "sticky" it is. But, a well developed dough shouldn't be sticky, it should be tacky (sticky doesn't release from a surface, tacky does) unless you're using a really high hydration, and that's another thing altogether. A good dough won't need much flour to keep it from sticking. So, reduce water and/or develope more gluten - either knead to window pane or allow more time - like 18 hrs for gluten to develope. And the flip side - a way over fermented or proofed dough will also get sticky as the gluten structure breaks down. The fix for that would be don't ferment or over proof. Hope it helps!
Currently following an 80% hydration open crumb recipe. Is that considered high hydration?
If it is a mostly white flour dough then 80% would be quite high hydration for me.
Danny, I have used both water and flour to prevent sticking. I’ve decided I prefer the flour method. I lightly flour the counter first. Then with slightly wet fingers I loosen the dough from the edges of the bowl and dump the dough onto the floured counter. I then proceed to shaping again using as little flour as possible to prevent sticking. When shaping, try to brush off excess flour from the dough on surfaces that will become the inside of the loaf. You really only want the raw flour to be on the outside of the dough and not the inside.
Benny