How much water is typically lost in bulk fermentation?
Short version:
I'm making the Don't Be a Bread Hostage sourdough as modified by Martin Philip today. This morning I realized I wasn't sure if I had tared my container to take into account the starter before adding water or not. Long story short, I decided to add 100g more of water. The funny thing is when I weighed the total dough after bulk fermentation the result suggests I added too much water although the dough after bulk fermentation wasn't sticky or the least bit hard to work with.
Is there a general rule of how much water (as % of starting water) evaporates during an 8 to 10 hour bulk fermentation? And are recipes so forgiving that using 100g extra water isn't a problem and seemed to make the dough even easier to work with?
Long version:
I ask because my weights don't add up. The recipe that I use calls for 1000g flour, 20g S, 100g starter (50/50 flour/water) and 750g of water. That adds up to 1870g of dough. Yet when I weighed the dough this evening I had 1880g.
I can only think of two possibilities: (a) I added 750g of water (as recipe calls for) and the humidity in my house added 10g of water or (b) I added 850g of water (100g more than the recipe calls for) and 90g of it evaporated over the 9 hours of bulk fermentation. (In scenario a, I had forgotten to tare after adding the starter and when my scale read 750g it was registering just 650g of water, so by adding 100g more I achieved the goal of 750g. In scenario b, I had tared after adding the starter and ended up adding 100g more of water to the 750g already in my bucket).
I'm leaning towards scenario b--it seems more likely that I had 90g of evaporation than 10g of hydration--but can't figure out why the dough was so easy to handle if I'm adding 100g more than called for.
Thoughts are much appreciated.
PD I realize that the starter is 50/50 flour and water and needs to be accounted for when thinking about baker's percentages (total flour is 1050g and total water is 800 or 900g depending on whether I added 750 or 850g) but it does not change my basic question.
If the bulk ferment container is covered, there's not much evaporation that could happen. I can't see 90g worth. Even uncovered that seems like a very large amount of evaporation. And if the dough had been uncovered and lost that much through evaporation the surface would be dried out and you surely would have noticed that. If you truly added another 100g of water on top of 750g that would make a major difference in the dough's properties. That points to measurement error.
TomP
As long as the dough is covered during bulk, I wouldn't expect a measurable amount of water to evaporate. CO2 production would be more believable to me, and even that would be on the order of less than 2g per liter of dough expansion, if my math is correct. My dough almost never weighs the same after bulk ferment as the sum of all the ingredients, but I usually chalk that up to losing whatever stuck to my hands during mixing and/or folds.
What flour did you use? I would say that most flours are not forgiving enough to handle 85% hydration without getting very sticky, but if you're using whole wheat instead of white 85% may be the correct hydration.
Another possibility is that, rather than pulling 10g of water from the air, you're introducing 10g of water with your wet hands during the folds.
The wet hands theory. It makes the most sense.
Kind regards,
Will F.
Thanks to Tom, Will and all that answered. I do wet my hands liberally when doing four sets of folds during the first hour of bulk fermentation. I think wet hands wins hands down.
I just pulled two loaves from the oven and look great.
G
In this old thread, https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5202/wet-dough-questions
Bill Wraith said: "As far as keeping everything at the right hydration, if you only wet the counter by rubbing wet hands on it and brushing off excess, and you shake water off your hands, the amount of water you will incorporate in the dough is fairly small. I've estimated that each time you rewet the dough and your hands, if you get rid of excess, maybe around a tablespoon or 10-20grams of water is being added to the dough each time."
Four folds could amount to 80g.
I would love to have a gander at the finished product.
Your new nickname 😄
Thanks! And thanks to this forum for its collective wisdom.
Fabulous looking loaves! Never seen better. Whatever the scale said about water, you're doing it right.
TomP
Zero loss if the container is covered. There will be condensation on the insides of the container, which is not in contact with the dough. This is far less than 90g, using the original post as the example, which is more than 10% of the total starting water mass.
Beware "ricettedicaterina