August 26, 2020 - 10:40am
Morbread Flour
I recently bought a 50lb bag of Morbread white flour. I made my normal Tartine sourdough recipe using 900 g of this flour, 100 g of KA WW and 700g of water. Prior to adding the levain, I mixed flour and water. Instead of the usual shaggy dough, I had a dough with consistency of thick pancake batter. My levain of 50/50 flour mix using Morbread was considerably more liquid than normal as well. Is this the normal experience with Morbread?
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I used Morbread for years, until I moved to where it is not available. At 70% hydration it would not normally be that loose, especially with the whole wheat flour in the mix. I do assume it was weighed out correctly, so perhaps your sack of flour is more moist than what you used previously? I always found Morbread to be relatively high humidity, and had to adjust when I moved to a different flour. The flours I use now still seem dry to me in comparison after several years using Morbread.
How was it after the autolyse?
How did the bread turn out?
Edit: I just checked, and the Morbread flour I was using was from Pendleton Mills. Yours says Grain Craft... In that case my comments probably do not apply. You should look up the protein and ash content of the Grain Craft version and compare it to what you were using before. That should give you some insight into why it is behaving as it does. The Pendleton Mills version was a medium-high protein flour at ~12%. That made it more thirsty than an AP-level (10.5-11.5%) flour. I suspect your version is not that high. Coupled with a difference in flour humidity, it could explain what you are seeing and tell you why you need to adjust.
OldWoodenSpoon
Thanks. Pretty sure Morbread is still ~ 12%. I keep the bag in a closed workshop and it has been somewhat humid here. Still, that's a BIG difference in dough wetness. Was still that loose after autolyse. I added more flour to thicken it. We'll see how it turns out. In bulk ferm now. Don't have high hopes.
at my last job, we switched from imported italian flours to graincraft, and let me tell you half the bakers developed skin rashes when using it. there are a lot of additives in there. you may need to watch fermentation times as well.