June 7, 2012 - 9:27pm
whats wrong with this percentage recipe? I feel stupid...
ok....I am experienced enough with bakers percentages and make all my recipes with them.
it must be the lack of sleep of late because I don't see what's wrong with this recipe.
total flour weight: 1000 grams.
percentage 100% hydrated sourdough 20% (its summer after all)
total hydration wanted 65%.
so there we go.
needed:
20% of 1000 = 200, of which equal weights flour and water aka 100 grams each.
65% of 1000 = 650 grams water.
1000-100 grams = 900 grams flour.
650-100 grams = 550 grams water
20% starter = 200 grams.
Someone please tell me whats wrong here. Its dry......the dough I mean. Did I make a mistake? I did not forget the salt, this is just the basic dough and 2% would be added after initial mix and half hour wait.
thanks.
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hydration so that is rather low for a wheat bread flour or any absorbant flour. So, yes, it would be dry. If you added the salt, even drier. That is often why salt is delayed as it absorbs a lot of the moisture that could be used to moisten the flour.
I would be tempted to use a lower hydration starter, say 65% so more liquid could be added to the dough. And delay salt addition until after the starter is blended in.
550 / 900 = 0.611 x 100 = 61% Good morning! :)
I don't mix the flour and water without the starter. I thought I wrote that after the initial mix the dough seemed too dry, so it had everything in, except salt which gives it a 65% hydration.
Always calculate hydration on total flour weight and only after that start making up a recipe and subtract water/ flour in the sourdough from the recipes water/ flour.
Unless someone thinks I am doing it wrong all those years.
Hi Berti,
Why don't you try adding extra water in small and controlled amounts and see if you end up with dough you are happier with? It may help you to understand more about the type of flour you are using. Salt is added at 2%, I take it you have just made a typo here.
Best wishes
Andy
andy, thanks thats what I did ;) and thanks for the heads up on the typo, indeed I use 2% of course!!!
ACKKKK imagine a bread with 20% salt!!!
that's how I read it. I thought it a little weird not to include the starter in with the flour & water, but I've done stranger things. :)
LOL!
well I actually corrected the percentage of the salt after the heads up post ;) it WAS 20%.
but I learned to also convert yeast to sourdough and vice versa, and how to adjust used sourdough percentage according to seasons.
I did include the starter with the flour and water if you read it again ;)
so thats how I work, nothing strange...just different :)
If you mean it's dry compared to other times you've made the same recipe, then the first place I'd look is the flour.
Are you using new flour? I believe the humidity listed on flour sacks is an estimate. It could be that your flour this time is a little less humid. One way to find out is by weighing the sack. If I have a 5kg sack of flour that weighs slightly less than 5kg, that means it lacks humidity, not flour. This would mean you'd need to adjust a bit. Your flour can also dry out if you've had it around for a while, like a couple months.
Otherwise, perhaps try cutting down your wait time between that initial mix of flour and water. Try 20 minutes, and see if that helps any. I generally wait 20 minutes, so 30 would be a bit long for me, but I don't know if it actually changes anything.
Good luck!
well its dry compared to other doughs I made before, as it feels rather dry, this is a new recipe that I made up.
not using a new flour, sack was 25 kg originally and now nearing last kgs , and indeed open for a few months.
I know humidity on sacks is an estimate, never take notice of that one ...usually don't run in problems. Weather has been exceptionally WET last week.
the final dough has been made now and I found out (lack of sleep and dough was mixed 1 am!) that I left out 50 grams water.
added that in the morning, did my folds after the last mix/ salt and now its proofing ok.....second hour now.
maybe I should next time keep some more water on hand to correct to "dough feel". what do you do?
:)
I misinterpreted your initial mix to be what I do when I use a biga from brewer's yeast, when I mix the flour and water before adding the biga. I haven't ever done it with sourdough or even the few sourdough bigas I've made, but then again I'm extremely new to the sourdough world. Forgive my ignorance.
Humidity in sacks can cause issue, but as you've said it's unlikely that it causes much difference.
It seems like you've already solved your problem, but to answer your question, I do always leave myself open to adding controlled amounts of water to the dough if I don't like the way it looks. I just make sure I know exactly how much I'm adding. I'm also a simple pizzaiolo new to the bread side of things, so all of my bread making is trial and error to this point.
eric, I totally see how that could happen, then!! no problem ;) and from me, welcome to the wonderful world of sourdoughs!! its now 9 years for me (or thereabouts) and I learned from scratch...trial and errors , out of frustration because recipes from books or internet did not really work until I came across peter reinhart, and the rest was history....from there a steep learning curve! still fascinated by everything sourdough. I highly recommend Dan Leaders books also plus the "breadbuilders" from Wing and Scott.
trial and error works, and it helps to find what suits YOU. warmest greetings from netherlands.