Dough hydration has a way of increasing
Today I am baking an 85% hydrated SD. I choose Maurizio’s “My Best Sourdough” . Strictly by chance I learned something today.
Since this bake has a relatively small amount of whole wheat the dough is extremely wet. I decided to hold out 25 grams and of water. I chickened out :) 25 grams of water equals 2.6% hydration. By holding 25g I would have reduced the hydration to roughly 82.5%. I left the 25g of water in a bowl. As I did my S&F I used the hold out water to wet my hand to prevent sticking. After 6 or 7 S&F the excess water was used up.
So I ended up with the full amount of water after all. BUT, the point of this post is, if you wet your hands like I do, even though I try to shake some of the excess off, I inadvertently added about 2.5% to the hydration. If I would have used all of the water and then used an additional 25g to wet my hands, the dough hydration would have been 87.5%.
In the future, especially for wet doughs, I plan to hold out 20-25g water to wet my hands. Then I should have the precise hydration the formula specifies.
Dan
”in bread baking, little things matter”
an excellent observation that I never took into account, thank you!
I've wondered about this. Thanks for putting some numbers to it!
I think there are other places that change hydration as well. I'm sure every time we take the dough out of the container and do S&Fs, some water evaporates. Additionally, probably not all of that 20-25g went in to the dough: some was probably absorbed by your skin, and some other part evaporated. Maurizio also probably wets his hands when he makes 87% hydration dough. But his 87% hydration dough with his flour in Arizona probably has quite a different consistency than my 87% KA AP flour in New Hampshire.
I made an 80% loaf yesterday with 10% freshly milled and 90% KA AP. While I certainly can push the hydration for this flour combination to 85+%, it really doesn't benefit from it. I actually get a better crumb with the lower hydration. I don't think it's about handling, but the fact that when the flour is too weak, it takes the dough longer t be able to trap the CO2 in large pockets.
If I understand with AP tthe BF’s time should automatically be longer to be fully developed ?
In Quebec I notice that it takes always more water than recommended to get the right consistency . The 85% become more like 90% .
I haven’t experienced a need to BF AP flour longer. I am thinking that because the gluten is less strong the bulk ferment may even be reduced. But not sure about that.
I can say that the higher the protein the more water the flour will absorb.
Dan