New and Getting confused....
Hi all. I'm new (and addicted) to this! When I say "new" I mean totally... it's been like 3 or 4 weeks and I've just figured out the baker's percentage thing.
I have "perfected" a pizza dough that I love. Now I've moved on to cinnamon buns.
Problem is I'm getting confused. Mostly with why/what makes a dough sticky/too hard to work with.
Question:: when you're figuring out how much total moisture you've worked with, do you add up the liquid, fat, and eggs?
Example: my pizza dough is 58% water, 6% olive oil and just a tiny bit sticky but easy to work with
The cinnamon bun dough I just tried (more like a sweet dough than a brioche) was 35% milk, 12% butter, 17% eggs. It was too wet to work with. In the fridge overnight and I was able to roll it out without trouble, but it stuck to my countertop.
both recipes have the same total percentage of "wet" ingredients but one was almost impossible to work with
I actually want to try a brioche dough, but the recipe is like 20% milk, 60% butter, and 50% eggs.... so I'm afraid it would be almost like a cake batter
Can anyone help me understand this better?
liquids other than water contribute to the moisture in the dough. There are formulas available for calculating "effective hydration" for these various ingredients, but I am a fairly experienced baker (well acquainted with baker's percentages and unafraid of math) and have never really needed to bother with them.
What jumps out at me, is that you are describing dough at 58% water as fairly sticky (even with a mere 6% of olive oil) and a sweet dough recipe of at most 64% as being too wet to work with. Both of these are fairly low - or moderate hydrations. They should be far from too wet to be managed. For example, I do a pizza dough with 65% water and 10% olive oil and it handles beautifully - although many would consider it to be fairly dry.
These lead me to another factor in dough formulas - the percentage of protein in the flour. I am going to assume that you are working with wheat flour and that you are using white (not whole wheat) flour. Since you are making bread, you should be using flour milled from "hard" wheat - that is to say not cake or pastry flour.
However, the flours available to most home bakers vary widely in protein content. "All purpose" flours can range from 9.6% protein to 11.7% protein. The same amount of liquid will create a "wetter" dough at 9.6% protein than at 11.7% protein. It is devilishly hard to find the actual protein spec in most flours sold to consumers, but some people on these pages have done the homework to find these out and a search engine will be your friend.
Another factor is the amount of development you are giving the gluten (that is, are you developing to "windowpane" or somewhere short of that). This is not only the initial mixing/kneading, but also the amount of time the dough spends in bulk fermentation and the number (and vigor) of the folds you give the dough during that fermentation. Doughs with high amounts of butter and eggs often require more time in the mix to attain the same development as those with only water.
Your formula for brioche dough sounds about right in terms of percentages, but mixing brioche is a special technique where the gluten is well developed in the absence of butter and then "cold, pliable" butter is added at the end of the mix. Also, we often want to use higher protein (12%) flour for brioche. You cannot simply take the ingredients for brioche, mix them together like a regular bread dough and expect anything but a mess.
The last thing is - well - dough is gonna stick. Moving quickly while working, having a good work surface (I prefer wood), and judicious use of flour on both the work surface and your hands will reduce this, but if you think that dough will pull cleanly from your work surface and hands with nary a bit stuck on - you may need to adjust your expectations.
So yes, there is a big part of this that is not simply math - it is technique, technique, technique. Perhaps I have used terms in this answer with which you are not familiar. They are standard baking terms and coming to know what they mean is part of the journey of being a baker. Baking is hand skills as much as mind skills and you should progress in your ability to manage the process as you gain experience.
As an aside, I always find it breathtaking when people claim to have "perfected" anything - especially in 3-4 weeks. I've been baking over a half a century and there is nary a product I produce where I am not forced to wonder "is this really the absolute best that it can be?" I think about that from time to time.
Hope this helps.
I've also been at this for a spell, have yet to perfect anything. As soon as one stops wondering if there is a better way, the fun's over.
cheers
Dealing with stickiness is one of the things that I routinely have to help students with when they don't have much experience. It's pretty cool to help a person who thinks a 55-60% hydration dough is on par with superglue understand that there are techniques which allow them to effectively handle much wetter doughs.
To the O.P.: Pat's points about dough being a sticky thing are very much on point. If you can't find classes in your area, or even if you can, there are a number of videos you can find on the net that show techniques for managing wet doughs. Those doughs are sticky! Some non-wheat flours (like rye) are even more so. Watch and practice, practice, practice. As your skills develop, you will be able to wrangle very sticky doughs with a minimum of fuss.
Paul
Not sure of your point to me, but it may be a reflection on the manner of my bread baking education that I simply stated the truth. Those are fairly low or moderate hydrations - now on to the other variables (such as dough development - particularly in enriched doughs) that may be accounting for the stickiness the new baker is encountering. What I find is that beginning bakers tend to under develop doughs - using recipe guidelines as truth and not understanding that five minutes of pushing dough around on the bench will develop dough less than the same amount of time spent kneading with your "back into it" or thinking a flabby fold will develop dough the same as a muscular one.
Which leads to my next point.
I do think about this phenomenon of people trying to learn baking without actual contact with another baker. Even videos on the internet lack one important thing - the requirement of feeling the dough. If you don't touch it, you don't know for sure. I can look at a video and learn a lot. "Geez - that dough went from slack and flabby to firm after that fold - it must have been a good one!" but a new baker might not make that connection.
But it does warm my heart to see that you have judged at least one of my points to be correct. The others are also.
Pat
It was more of an observation about how experience affects perception. Hs4816 mentioned how sticky the dough was. In turn, you pointed out that the dough is one with comparatively low hydration and not all that sticky. Both of you were stating your perceptions, which are heavily influenced by your relative degree of experience.
My takeaway, influenced by my experience, was that I need to understand the knowledge level of my hearer if I hope to communicate effectively. However, I can still be less than clear, as is evident here.
Paul
Not to turn this into a discussion on internet pedagogy, but what do I have to offer the OP except my more experienced perceptions?
And, if you read all the words, I said that doughs at the given formulas should not be too sticky to handle. And that is simply true. Had the OP given formulas at 80-90% hydration, I would have stated that perhaps that was a hydration a bit ambitious for a beginner and he/she should "crank it down."
What I gave the OP was a discussion of why his/her dough might be problematic - from flour to dough development to (erm) "you just need to learn and practice more." All of which (if actually read - which I know a long post like that does not inspire) would help the OP.
I consider that to be more help than just saying "yes, dough is sticky when you are a beginner."
If he/she were standing next to me I could see the origin of the problem - but in this medium, I cannot. But even then, should the student say "This dough is too sticky to handle" - I would share my experienced perception that it wasn't, really, (if the formula was at low/moderate hydration) and address with the student the steps needed to handle the dough correctly.
I once had the experience of a fine baking teacher standing by my elbow asking pointedly "What are you doing wrong?" Repeatedly. I finally said "Just tell me, because if I knew, I wouldn't be doing it wrong." I needed the more experienced perception - not my own.
As a subsequent post by the OP shows, the underlying issue seems not to be the formulas, but problems with that most vital and complex issue of dough development. Once again, all I have to offer are my more experienced perceptions. And although more than a sound bite - I believe it all to be sound advice.
As an aside, I hope mightily for this week long streak of rain and snow in CO to break soon - it does strange things to our minds :>)
are by weight, since that's the only way bakers percentages work, then hydration percentages are a measure of the water content. So, a liquid that does not contain water, such as vegetable oil, does not factor into the hydration calculatons. It can certainly affect the dough characteristics (rheology, if you prefer) but it is not part of hydration.
Different ingredients have varying water contents. Butter and honey are each around 15% water. Cow's milk ranges from about 87% to 95%, depending on whether it is whole, low fat, skim, etc. I tend to treat milk as if it were 100% water, since my home-size batches aren't much affected by the discrepancy, but that wouldn't work for someone making 50 pounds or more of dough at a time. Eggs are approximately 90% water. A number of fruits and vegetables have water contents in the 85% to 95% range, which can tilt the dough hydration noticeably if the baker doesn't take them into account. And so on.
As you are learning, there is much to learn, so have fun doing it! I have, on occasion, had to work with flours that are new to me. To understand how they behave, I have mixed several small doughs at different hydration levels. For instance: Dough A has 100g of flour and 50g of water, Dough B has 100g of flour and 60g of water, and so on all the way up to Dough F that has 100g of flour and 100g of water. That gives me a snapshot of what to expect at different hydration levels for that particular flour. If you try this experiment with the flours you use, you can then mix all of them together with yeast and salt to make a batch of bread.
Paul
in dealing with sticky doughs when you are just beginning and haven't figured out the right amount of flour to add to your work surface to prevent sticking. Doughs where oil is a component such as the pizza dough you made tend to be less sticky and more easy to manipulate.
Messy-free methods of making brioche by Jacques Pepin and America's Test Kitchen:
Jacques Pepin's method of making brioche: He uses a food processor. I watched his cooking show, and his brioche dough was a thick batter. He chilled the dough overnight in the fridge. He easily shaped the chilled dough. The recipe and method is listed here: http://blogs.kqed.org/essentialpepin/2011/09/18/brioche/
America's Test Kitchen method of no knead brioche: They used melted butter when putting ingredients. The dough consistency was on the wet side. They used a rubber spatula to fold the dough over itself every 30 minutes during bulk fermentation. I don't remember how many times the fold, probably three or four times. They also left the dough chilled in the fridge.
examination of the Pepin recipe - you will find that the two step method of mixing is followed. He develops the gluten without butter first (albeit in a very short time because of the power of the food processor) and then adds softened butter.
This two step method is used because large amounts of fat will inhibit the formation of good gluten structure and something - either the two steps (where gluten can be developed without the fat) or the long periods of resting punctuated by folds (for a "no knead" method) are required.
Insufficient gluten development in brioche will result in a very delicious product that has a cake like texture. We will happily eat it, but close examination of the texture will show it as not the very best it could be. When the gluten is developed correctly, there will be a distinct "breadiness" to the vienoisserie.
M. Pepin's formula is very short on flour and I will speculate that his extraordinary hand skills are what allow him to shape it. However, the picture with the recipe is of a brioche a tete - while the shaping instructions call simply for rounds. It would be much more difficult to shape the brioche a tete with this very soft dough.
I stand by my statement that simply treating a brioche formula like regular bread will not give good results. (Oh my, yes, proth5 is in a mood!)
Thanks everyone for your really helpful replies.
I should have inserted some notation indicating a bit of sarcasm when I say I "perfected" my pizza dough. What I really meant, is it is now edible and looks/tastes like pizza (my first few batches were more like pizza crackers).
As I typed my questions this morning the buns were in the oven. As I watched them and saw that they were turning out the way I wanted, I realized a lot of my frustration likely has to do with inexperience working with dough. I suspect the theory put forth that my dough is probably not "unworkably sticky" is true. I just don't know how to work with it yet.
The buns turned out really good and I don't think I want to change the recipe... so I'm going to have to learn to work with it better.
One thing I can't figure out is how long to knead things. I'm using a stand mixer and have wrist problems so wouldn't be able to do it by hand. My pizza dough was over 12ish minutes, but these cinnamon buns were about 7. It was just a random guess when to stop.
Either way, this is super fun and so gratifying.
thanks
I'm in this mood (and if I gave a full explanation, y'all might understand, but I will not do so) I might as well reply.
The question you ask plays into my strong belief that one must feel the dough (or the loaf) or one really knows nothing. Terms such as "smooth and elastic" are often used to describe properly developed dough. Back in the day we heard "cleans the sides of the bowl" These are vague, but once you've felt it (ok, maybe a few times...) you know. It isn't random.
The "cleans the sides of the bowl" brings out another important point about stickiness and gluten development. That is, as the gluten begins to form its little network - without any addition of flour - the dough will become less sticky. You heard it here. The fact that a dough goes from an unmanageable sticky mass to something that holds together (especially at lower and moderate hydrations) and doesn't stick to every surface, is a good indicator that it is sufficiently developed. I use a spiral mixer (not commonly found in the home)for most of my doughs and I always test them by feeling the dough itself, but a quick visual cue is that the dough begins to lift from the bottom of the mixer and be "picked up" by the spiral hook. Not the case for you perhaps, but suggestive nonetheless.
While you are learning, you should stop your mixer frequently and put your hand on the dough. Is it just ripping apart? Is it holding firm but still not springy? Is it offering significant resistance? Wheat flour doughs are very tolerant to mixing. While you can overmix your dough, with most stand mixers, you probably won't. The more you stop and evaluate what you have, the more you will learn.
We also hear the term "windowpane." This is taking an ounce or so of dough and seeing if it can be teased out until it forms a translucent membrane. I am sure that YouTube contains many videos of that. For many of our doughs (such as baguettes), we do not wish to mix to that point. We want to mix somewhat short and allow the time and folds of the bulk ferment to complete the task. On other doughs (like sweet doughs), we do mix to that point.
What you don't mention is how you fold during the bulk ferment. Again, back in the day, we "punched down" the dough halfway through. These days we either fold it on the bench or in the fermentation container. I will evaluate the dough development at that point. Does it seem too weak? Is it a bit too slack and sticky? Put some muscle into the fold. Is it "just right"? Fold a bit more gently.
And fortunately for many of us, simply letting dough "sit around" will add to development which is why so many people like to let the dough rest in the refrigerator overnight.
But again, it is all for the same reason - that "smooth and elastic" feel.
The phrase is "watch the dough not the clock" - the time to mix will be when the dough is at the right stage of development.
Hope this helps.
This has been a great thread to read. During the winter I experimented with brioche recipes and I made the one from Hitz book which had you freeze the dough over night and Floyds version, which I chilled in the fridge for twenty four hours. They both came out great.