Bittman/Lahey No-Knead Bread hydration
So I've made no-knead bread before and was a bit disappointed. But recently I got reinspired to try the Bittman/Lahey version as published in the NYT:
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1 5/8 cups water
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Mark Bittman was on "Good Food" on KCRW with Evan Kleiman a couple of weeks ago, talking about this recipe. What's interesting was that in his interview notes [1], he mentions the weights to use. However, someone please tell me how 1-5/8 cups water weighs 345g! :)
I measured these ingredients, and here's the comparison:
Flour: 428g (me), 430g (Bittman) (3 cups)
Water: 385g (me), 345g (Bitt.) (1-5/8 cups)
Table Salt: 8g (me), 8g (Bitt.) (1-1/4 tsp)
Instant Yeast: 1g (me), 1g (Bitt.) (1/4 tsp)
What's interesting about this, is that the water listed is close to 89% hydration! As a result, the dough is extremely wet and goopy, almost like a batter! Here are baker's percentages (using a nice dough calculator [2]); I'm using ADY instead of IDY:
Flour (100%): 430.37 g | 15.18 oz | 0.95 lbs
Water (89%): 383.03 g | 13.51 oz | 0.84 lbs
ADY (.2%): 0.86 g | 0.03 oz | 0 lbs | 0.23 tsp | 0.08 tbsp
Salt (1.8%): 7.75 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.39 tsp | 0.46 tbsp
Total (191%): 822 g | 28.99 oz | 1.81 lbs | TF = N/A
My questions are:
- 89% hydration can't be right, can it? Did I do something wrong here?
- How much water do you use when you make this recipe?