Hydration issue with artisan bread!
All right, well, long story short I did some research on hydration percentages because my bread was turning out a little dense. After some research, my understanding was that you add the weight of the dry ingredients up and then sum up the weight of the wet ingredients, and finally divided the weight of the wet ingredients by the dry ingredients. I'm trying to make some baguettes, but my dough is REALLY dry, I think I've done something wrong. I do not have a scale, so I researched the average weight of a cup of water, and a cup of flour. YES, I do know how to measure flour directly, I did not dig.
Assumed 125g per cup of flour, and 237g per cup of water.
1 1/4 Cups Water (296g)
3 1/2 Cups Flour (437)
1 Tablespoon Yeast
1 Tablespoon Salt
I'm trying to make French bread, which (I think.) has a 65-70% hydration percentage. I came up with 69% which is the high end of French bread.
My dough is so dry, I'm having trouble incorporating all of the flour. Hopefully I get a response in time to save this loaf, but if not I'll start over. Help!