Reinhart's Light Wheat Bread: Am I reading this wrong?
Hi Fresh Loaf People...
I received the Bread Baker's Apprentice for Christmas. I am a long time home baker, but I was interested in trying Reinhart's formulas and (I hope) learning new ideas about bread baking.
The first formula I tried was his "Light Wheat Bread." This seemed like a simple starting place in his book.
I was surprised at how dry the formula was... 55.6% hydration? I am used to much wetter dough (65% minumum), but I thought I would try to follow his directions before going my own way.
His recipe was for only a single loaf, so I used the baker's % to scale up:
overall | grams | |
wheat flour | 37.50% | 797.7 |
white flour | 62.50% | 1329.4 |
water | 55.60% | 1182.7 |
salt | 2.10% | 44.7 |
yeast | 0.94% | 20.0 |
Honey | 4.20% | 89.3 |
Dried Milk | 5.60% | 119.1 |
Butter | 5.60% | 119.1 |
total | 174% | 3702 |
The resulting dough was nearly unworkable. I finally broke down and added more (and more) water (about 250 g more).
Revised formula:
wheat flour | 797.7 | 37.50% |
white flour | 1329.4 | 62.50% |
water | 1432.7 | 67.35% |
salt | 44.7 | 2.10% |
yeast | 20.0 | 0.94% |
Honey | 89.3 | 4.20% |
Dried Milk | 119.1 | 5.60% |
Butter | 119.1 | 5.60% |
total | 3952.0 | 185.79% |
The loaves are in the oven now, but I don't have high hopes for how they will turn out. I think the dough was abused too much in the process.
I found a post here where someone also added additional water and was happy with the result. My question is... has anyone had sucess with the formula as written? Or is it me... have I misunderstood how I should be applying the formula?