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richard bertinet dough and weighing small amounts

rolls's picture
rolls

richard bertinet dough and weighing small amounts

hi i made richard bertinet's basic white dough the other day. as he suggested i weighed everything even the water, to be more accurate. however, i found it difficult to weigh small amounts such as the salt and yeast.

i also found my dough dry compared to his, although i did use his method and recipes and the results were excellent. i made two fougasse and two baguettes.

i was wondering if anyone can lend some advice regarding these?

 thanks heaps.

cfmuirhead's picture
cfmuirhead

I attended  his classes so i am not suprised that you were pleased with the results.  If you got the same hydration and you feel you dough is too dry, add a little more liquid: During his classes, he has fun adding great big slugs of liquid as we are working our dough... just to make it harder to knead and to show that a dough can be far more wet than one thinks and still make very good bread.  The quantity of liquid is very much determined by the type of flour you use (he uses Shipton Mill) and other factors that you have to judge it a bit, so the recipe is mainly a guide and you may need a few more ml.

As regard weighing small quantities, perhaps you need to invest in a scale that weighs to the g - most are accurate to 5g.  As for salt, 5g is about a teaspoon: check on the internet the volume/weight ratio.  If you buy you yeast in say 25 g cakes, split it in 5 before unwrapping them and storing them so that you have a guide.  Again for yeast, 1g either way will not lead to disaster.  The most important ratio in his recipes are the hydration, that is to say the liquid to the flour %.   Hope this helps.

leucadian's picture
leucadian

For small quantities, measure a larger quantity (say 8x) then divide it by eye into halves, quarters and eighths. For example,  if you want 18g of salt for 1kg of flour, measure out 8x18= 144g, then spread it out on a clean surface and proceed to divide it up, returning the remainder to the container. You'll be pretty close to 18g, and it's likely that the difference will be below your threshold of discrimination in the final bread. I just tried it myself with a scale that measures to the gram, and wound up with 17g after dividing it up, which I think is an acceptable error.