December 16, 2008 - 3:50pm
My Breads are too Dry
My friends are complaining that my breads are too dry. I am using 3 tablespoons of olive oil for each 4 chup of flour and between 1 1/4 and 1 1/3 cups of water.
Will a different type of oil be better, or should I jsut add more oil? Also, for more percentages of Whole Wheat, should I add more oil generally?
Thanks
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Dragon, what about adding more water? It seems that your recipe is about 30% hydration, which is pretty dry, even with the extra oil.
Make sure it feels right as you work it.
If it feels dry, if you add a lot of flour on the surface, it will be drier.
btw, what are you using for a surface to work the dough?
For those I'd suggest a large lightly oiled stainless bowl, or invest in silicone mats.
That way you will not need to add any additional flour once its mixed.
use a scale and target 64% hydration ratio - I use this with 80% whole wheat and 20% all purpose flour. Bake at 450 for 10 min, than 350 for 35-40 until (use a probe themometer) internal temp is 198 degrees. Bread will be moist and keep for 5 days or more! Happy baking...
More water is needed...definitely. You can even skip using any oil if you want to.
Thanks for the replies,
I am a novice at Breadmaking. I'm putting the ingredients into a breadpan and letting my breadmaker do all of the work. The size of the pan limits the amount of water I can use. I'll try making some smaller breads with a higher hydration ratio.
I'll let you know how it works out.
I use four cups of flour in my breadmaker, too. But I also use 1 1/2 cups of water. For my whole wheat recipe, I use 3 TBS olive oil, as you do, plus 3 TBS honey. With the whole wheat, I usually have to increase the water to at least 14 fl oz, to get the dough consistency right.
Ironically, if I use less water, I get a much denser, and therefore wetter, not drier, loaf. It just doesn't rise right if the dough is too dry.
Dave
I used this modified formula:
3 3/4 cups of flour
Between 1 1/3 and 1 1/2 cups of water.
I put the Bread in a Breadbag 5 minutes after removing it from the pan, while it was still steaming hot. The condensation was trapped in the bag and probably added extra moisture to the bread.
I wonder if this last factor made a significant difference to the moisture factor. I did this with my last 2 breads. They were significantly wetter than breads that were left out 1 hour, beofre sealing them in Bread Bags. I find it hard to believe that the small amounts of extra water and less flour made such a big difference.
Thanks,
Later