First off, I consider myself a beginner bread baker. I have much to learn, and I am still in my first year of professional bread making at a small bakery. We make around 20-30 loaves of hearth breads a day. Soon we will be at around 80.

We are very limited in space, and as such we store all of our 50lb bags of flours in our walk-in coolers maintained at around 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Mainly we deal with Hi-Gluten Flour and also Unbleached, Unbromated Patent or Bread flour.

We are in the middle of a pretty humid summer, and I just started at this bakery, but all of their flours seem to have the same problem. They don't absorb enough moisture.

For example, I make beautiful demi-baguettes out of my home gas stove with my flour that I hold at room temp. I tried the same recipe with their flour and they were very loose. I also tried another 65% hydration dough for baguettes just two days ago and I had come across the same problem. We have already adjusted all of our formulas to cope with this problem, but working with new recipes seems to be a chore. Is storing our flours in the bags in the walk-in cooler making them absorb moisture? We have plenty of room in the freezer and I'm thinking that if that is the problem we might store in the freezer. Thanks for your tips in advance.