Where it all started - Lesson One
Where it all started - Lesson One
My attempt at Artisan Rosemary Bread June 18, 2017
Pre-mentor I bumbled through a typical Pinterest recipe, being promised the world and ending up with an unsightly but edible loaf. A 30 minute hands-on-time promised, a three hour hands-on-time ended up being more accurate. Why was it so difficult? It proofed beautifully, but as soon as I went to form the loaves I realized I had a pile of sticky bubbling goo that did not resemble dough in the slightest. After two hours of rising I was determined to bake it, so I added cup after cup of flour, until I almost had a round "loaf." I placed poured it in to my trusty pre-heated cast iron pot and hoped for the best. Well it worked.. sort of. We munched on it happily, but for a whole day of work it certainly was no baguette from Pain d'Epis, and while I did not expect it to be award-winning, I would have settled for worthy of the mouth-watering that the smells emerging from the oven elicited.
I started researching some books to get a better idea of the fundamentals, and Tim (my dear husband) sent the ones I showed him off to "the bread whisperer" to get an opinion. Before I knew it I had my first homework assignment - figure out what went wrong by converting my recipe to grams and reading up on bakers math. With my hate-hate relationship with math I knew this was going to be fabulous fun, so I dove in. A couple of frustrating attempts later this is what I came up with:
- 3 cups lukewarm water = 791g
- 1-1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (1-1/2 packets) = 13g
- 1-1/2 tablespoons kosher salt = 18g
- 6-1/2 cups all-purpose white flour = 845g
- 2 tablespoons sugar = 25g
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary = 25g
so based on what I read - the water probably should have been at about .70 of the flour? If that's the case - the water should've been about 591g - which explains why I had a soggy mess on my hands and had to add a ton of flour when attempting to knead and shape?! According to this I was at about 94% hydration?!
If my original recipe was in bakers math
- Flour: 100% 845g
- Water: 94% 791g
- Salt: 21% 17g
- Instant yeast: 15% 13g
- Total: 230%
A more useable recipe would be something like this?
- Flour: 100% 845g
- Water: 70% 591g
- Salt: 2% 2g
- Instant yeast: 2% 2g
- Total: 174%
And I was close! TBW (the bread whisperer) suggested 66% would probably make a better result, but ultimately yes - 94% hydration is why I had a sticky situation on my hands.
Well lesson one - a flooded flour - I got a nod, I passed, so now for lesson two!
Comments
Check the definition of Cup (unit) in Wiki.
For US cup;
3 cup water = 709g (based on the customary cup 236.58 ml)
6.5 cup flour = 780 ~ 910g (120 ~ 140g/cup)
Not only the volume of a cup is different in different regions, but also the weight of flour in a cup (depending on how you scoop the flour)
I often try to look for a recipe based on weight instead of volume.
For instance, using sites like Online Conversion.com or Convertme.com, the numbers work out like this:
3 cups water - 711g
1.5 tablespoons yeast - 14g (a packet in the U.S. is 7g, which is slightly less than a tablespoon)
1.5 tablespoons Kosher salt - 17g
6.5 cups of flour - 811g (AP) or 890g (bread) [hmm, that's interesting]
2 tablespoons sugar - 25g
Depending on whose numbers you want to trust, with the flour being the big variable, the dough would certainly have been somewhere in the sticky-gloppy continuum. Weight measurements definitely give you a better sense of how the dough should behave and improve you ability to achieve the outcome you want.
Keep on baking and experimenting.
Paul
with 2 cups of water.
When following cups, a cup of water weighs almost twice as much as a cup of flour. Just looking at the recipe that translates into equal weights (100%) of water and flour, about, and that would be a batter in my experience.
AP at 70% hydration is a bit on the wet side for a beginner so I would drop back into the AP range of 50 to 65% water. Two cups of water puts it into 58 to 60% range. Looking roughly at the recipe that means for every cup of water at least 3 cups of flour. So two cups water is doable, you will want more water in the recipe if you tend to work a lot of flour in while kneading. Water is the easiest ingredient to change without having to adjust salt and other ingredients. Adding a lot of flour means adding more salt, rosemary, sugar, yeast etc. Start out with two cups and then add a little spoon splash if you can't get all the flour worked into the dough. That is how I would go about this recipe.
Not sure how you got such a high number for water in grams, a metric cup will have 250ml and 3 of them, 750g or 89% water. Anyway...
Thank you all for the feedback. We did re-work the numbers a couple of times, I wanted to keep it authentic and post what I first came up with. My math skills are pretty awful, and never having done any of it before I made a very rookie mistake of not zeroing out my scale before putting the cup on to get a baseline for my flour - which threw the numbers off. It finally clicked for me at the end of the lesson and doing bakers math this week and seeing the end product of my math and the physical act of putting it together with the numbers U crunched - it is all making great sense now and getting much easier and quicker to convert. It will still take a little while to get used to grams instead of cups but I do see how that can make things much more precise and accurate for baking so I will keep at it until it is habit!