I've baked all of our bread for many years although I am certainly not an expert.  For the past couple of years I've settled on either a whole wheat loaf with walnuts or pecans and currants, a round peasant loaf baked on a stone or baguettes in a perferated pan but again on a stone.  The last few months I've experienced decent oven spring but by the time the loaves come out of the oven they have shrunk considerably.  --This is true of all three breads.  The crumb is pretty dense.  I'm using the same recipes and flours, same SAF instant yeast.  I've not checked my oven temperture but wonder if I'm over baking or over proofing.  We use Bob's Red Mill or KA AP flour and Bob's Whole Wheat flour.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Gary 

Hi all,

I have been using my bread machine for several years, very good results so far. Then I had the idea to buy a kichen scale and start using it for the recipes, my wife was against, I convinced her by saying that we would have even greater reliability when using the scale. I tried a simple french bread, less ingredients would be better, I thought. Here is the french bread recipe that is in my bread machine book ( I have used it with success for several times ):

Water-1 1/2 cups Sugar- 2 TBL Salt 2 tsp Flour 4 cups Yeast 2 1/4 tsp

Converting water from volume to weight is easy: 355 grams, for the flour, I went to my king arthur package that says: 1 serving is 1/4 cup or 30 grams, so 4 cups would be 4*30*4 or 480 grams.

The bread was obviously too wet and collapsed. What could be wrong ? My wife wants to step back from the scale now. After the fact I calculate the hydration rate: 355/480 = 74% which much higher than the 66% the "the fresh loaf hadbook" tells.

OK, would my bread machine's recipe book be considering people would pack the flour when measuring by volume ? Any other conjecture ?

Another related question about hydration: Other liquids like oil, molasses, honey, should I add their weight when calculating the hydration rate ?

Thanks all for getting this far on my post, I need to save my marriage ;)