March 31, 2017 - 10:46am
gradually adding water to dough -- anyone familiar?
I recently saw Paul Hollywood use a technique I've never seen or read about anywhere. He was making a ciabatta loaf. He was using a stand mixer. He didn't add the entire amount of water at once. He added some, let the gluten develop through kneading in the mixer and then added more and continued to let the machine knead the dough.
His explanation was quite brief and didn't really make any sense to me.
Does anybody know and understand this technique? Does it have a name? Why would someone do this/how does it work?
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I add water after the autolyse when I add the salt and the levain if the dough needs it. I rather under hydrate my dough during the autolyse rather than over hydrate it because you can always add water but you can't take it away.
Yes, I employ that technique as well. But that's not what he was doing. He wasn't doing an autolyse at all. Neither was he adjusting the hydration. He held back a pretty large portion of the water during his kneading phase. So needless to say, I was pretty baffled.
said it was to develop the gluten bonds. Apparently the bonds are stronger at a lower hydration and then you add the water to ensure an open crumb. Hope this answers your question.
That kinda makes sense based on his description.
I have it recorded (from the Great British Bake Off Masterclass). Here is exactly what he says.
"You start by adding 3/4 [of the water] straight off and mix this to a conventional dough. (He lets it mix.) The dough is mixing round and beginning to develop into a ball. You can still see the flour on the outside. A little more water now. [He adds more water]. The more you mix it [the proteins] bind then stretch. So you don't flood it straight away."
I can't make any sense of that at all. Maybe it's nothing special and he just finds that it's easier to incorporate the water into the mix gradually. But he also describes the way the dough sounds slapping around after each water addition is added and when you know it's incorporated and ready to add more. So, I am thinking there is something more to it than just a mixing-to-incorporate method.
If you are mixing doughs with low hydrations (vs. something like a ciabatta) - let's just say somewhere below the low to mid 70's for example, you do not want to double hydrate. The dough will be too stiff to adequately mix well. It is a good technique for creating the gluten bonds, but only at higher hydrations.
alan
There's a pretty good explanation at Breadcetera. I guess it's just for ease of mixing high-hydration doughs. I recently took the Sourdough Experiments course online from Northwest Sourdough, where she did an experimental double hydration dough. The water added the second time was quite substantial and it took a long time to incorporate. The dough ended up sort of laminated and the resulting bread actually had a quite even crumb (surprisingly).
Thank you!
Mixers work best at certain dough hydrations and that ain't 80%. So he mixes a regular dough at a hydration that will allow the hook to knead the dough, not spin though it, and once gluten development is sufficient he adds additional water.
funny enough i also watched this masterclass just the other day, and this morning saw an instagram post of a similar method. this guy, Ceor bread, called it "continuous hydration" which is hand mixed but water is added not just post-autolyse but at each fold (or oil in the later folds). here's the link:
https://www.facebook.com/ceorbread/videos/1801473596846582/
in this case it seems to be a way to create a super-hydrated dough without it just becoming soup at the beginning. i imagine paul hollywood was employing the strategy for the same basic reason, though his dough is much lower hydration overall.
That's a very interesting video. That dough certainly appears to be something special.
I actually just came across mention of this in Hamelman's Bread. He refers to it as the bassinage technique. (Sidebar p. 91.)
It's that thing where you have never heard or seen something then once you notice it, you see it everywhere.