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 ;)

I recently ate some SPECTACULAR pizza bianca (in Sweden of all places) which I hadn't had since the last time I was in Rome. It got me inspired to recreate some of my own.

At the time, the chef in question, quite openly admitted that beautifully 'crisp outside / chewy inside' crumb was resultant from the 90% hydration. I gasped, wondering how I might mange a dough that sticky by hand.

So my questions are a) does anyone have a reliable formula specifically for this dough? And b) has anyone had any experience of working with the dough by hand?

All help gratefully received. Blessings to you all.