Flour and hydration in the UK
Hi all,
Have any UK-based bakers out there found it possible to work successfully with the high hydration levels found in many North American recipes? I’ve been finding that with hydration above 70% (and roughly 9:1 white:wholewheat), my dough seems much, much slacker than videos that I see featuring US bakers working with equivalent hydration. This has been the case with all the different supermarket flours I’ve tried - e.g. the strong white flours sold by Allinsons, Doves, Leckford Estate...
I’ve only been baking sourdough for a few months so it’s possible this is just an issue of methods and technique, all of which I’ll continue to work on. But in the meantime, I’m keen to hear from any other UK bakers on this issue - what are the highest hydration levels you’ve successfully worked with for roughly this kind of dough formula and with what brands of flour?
And a question for anyone... If the slackness is partly to do with differences between UK and North American flours, why is that (since all these flours have similar protein content to flours used by the US bakers whose videos I’m watching - 12-14%)?
Cheers!
Mike
hi Mike.
generally youll find that US hydration levels are higher than UK ones so not sure whats going on. Id say its technique. Generally American wheat has higher hydration levels so a 70% there is more like a 66 - 67% here. Higher protein levels tend to mean higher gluten and more hydration. French flours on the otherhand are made using soft wheat so they have much lower hydration levels. Try using an autolyse. If you have trouble with slackness start low and build slowly. Do more stretch and folds. It might be that youre over mixing so destroying gluten matrix? Do you use mixer or hands? I always suggest hands as itll give you feel of dough and changes as you go.
What is your formula?
As a UK baker myself, I'm not sure it's so easy to compare flour protein levels between different countries. There may be differences between how protein is calculated (relative to nitrogen analysis) and also how flour moisture content is taken into account.
Also I don't think the flour brands you quote are what I would consider optimal. For example I found that Leckford Estate bread flour won't take a high hydration, Doves Farm I don't like because it contains ascorbic acid. I've nothing against adding AA, but I will add it myself if I want to use it, rather than having it forced on me by the flour supplier (organic flour at that!).
I would suggest you try Marriages strong white bread flour, organic or not (they do both) - available from Ocado, or Waitrose extra strong Canadian or Shipton Mill no.4. I'm sure the white bread flours from Wessex Mill and Mathews will also be good, but I haven't used them myself.
These are all good up to 75%, or even 80% if you want to push the envelope...
Lance
No difference in calculation as such, more modification. The US standards (AACC) stipulate a "tailoring" shall we say, of the data. In so much as that it is adjusted post-test to include an assumed 14% moisture basis. The assays employed are actually the same.
But as I attempted to explain before this difference is irrelevant since we consumers glean our protein content from nutritional data which is always based on product weight and moisture is a fact of life.
Michael, I looked into this problem recently and decided to ask Marriages, who, as you know, supply very high quality bread flour in the UK. They were very helpful and a representative got back to me quickly with the following response:
"Dear Lance
Thank you so much for you enquiry. The protein content stated in the nutritional section on food sold in the UK is defined under the food information regulations (1169/2011 (EC)) to be “as is” calculated using the formula – (protein = total kjeldahl nitrogen x 6.25)
It is very difficult to compare nutrition labels from different countries, not only do you have the moisture issue i.e. is it “as is” or dry matter or corrected to 14% moisture. You also have the protein calculation from nitrogen, the EU uses a conversion factor of 6.25 for nutrition, but some countries use 5.7 or other conversion factors.
Unfortunately without testing the flour in a lab or looking up the legal requirements of each country and doing some maths (I have attached a section from a text book on calculation protein/moisture calculation for your information). I do not think it is easy for the home baker to quantify the protein of each flour from differing countries just from the information on the labels."
Also with American flours there is now the problem of rounding with their nutrition labelling, because they now state the protein content in whole numbers per 30g "serving" - meaningless! So if the nutrition label states 4g protein, the actual protein could be within the range 3.51 to 4.49g, or 11.7% to 15.0% - quite a range!
Lance
Lance,
The assay to determine protein by measuring Nitrogen always needs a factor of multiplication (a Jones constant). They vary on matter being analysed, this is standard and has no bearing on moisture. This data is then calculated as part of the weight of the product. See here for more info.
I agree with your point about the meaninglessness of US nutritional info as a serving however.
Michael
i believe one point Marriage's were making is that different countries may well use different Jones factors, which may make comparison of protein levels difficult.
Lance
sure, it too is my intention to highlight the futility of this protein comparison exercise, especially the one that occurs across the pond. North American wheats because they are harder are subject to greater starch damage which increases water absorption.
Of course if all millers employed rheological testing then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It's N x 5.7 in Italy btw.
PS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjeldahl_method
Hi Lance,
A quick follow-up question before I make a few flour purchases... Is it the Marriages Strong White Bread Flour that you’ve had success with at these levels of hydration, rather than their Very Strong?
Thanks a lot,
Mike
Hi Mike, the strong white is my weekly "cooking flour". At 13.3% protein it is strong enough for most duties.
If I had a lot of no gluten adjuncts like oats or barley, or was using a lot of wholemeal flour I would go 50/50 with the very strong and if I was doing a biga I would use all very strong.
To summarise I would go with the strong, but maybe buy yourself a bag or two of very strong as well if you can get both at the same time without extra carriage, just to try in the above scenarios.
Lance
That’s really helpful - thanks Lance! Looking forward to being able to push on with working on technique and process, without the niggling doubts about whether the flour is part of the problem.
That ties in with my experience, Mike. I'm in the UK and fine with waitrose strong Canadian (which someone here said was actually Marriages which is available online from Bakery Bits. I keep on about them, sorry, but they do stock everything) and also Duchy strong white and wholemeal. If they still cause you problems it might help to lower hydration to a point where you're comfortable and then gradually build it back up. Good luck though.
Thanks so much everyone for all these suggestions - this really helps me a lot. I suspect it is partly just that I need to develop my dough more. But these suggestions for alternative flours are a big help - and it’ll give me the confidence to keep working on technique and process knowing that the outcomes I'm looking for are possible with the ingredients I’m using. The suggestion that protein content might be calculated differently is also an interesting consideration that I hadn’t been aware of - I’m off to Google this and try to learn a bit more about it now! I guess it also reaffirms how much all this has to come down to practice and getting an intuitive feel for things, rather than hoping to be able to just follow a recipe and get exactly the same result.
I’m baking in the U.K. and normally mix my final dough at 72% so it’s quite possible... but it took quite a while to evolve a technique that worked well.
At first, like many I’m sure, i had a lot of trouble with excessive spreading of the loaf during proof, and I was buying the strongest (highest protein) flour I could get. However once I switched to a lower protein flour with a higher mineral content (FWIW it’s the Waitrose Duchy Organic strong white bread flour) I got much better results.
To be re are a LOT of other factors that also come into play... good stretch and fold technique; getting a good tension in the skin of the loaf; not having too high a proportion of starter, and (important) using enough SALT; etc etc.
Finally there’s the old truth that hydration is just a number: the /real/ objective is to make good tasting well textured bread...
That’s really useful too - thanks Martin. Spreading during proofing has definitely also been a problem - the dough often ends up gradually settling into the banneton as if it were a thick liquid. Even though it does hold its shape when I tip it out of the banneton for baking, I think this is contributing to problems including my boule loaves looking too much like a semi-circle in profile. I definitely still have work to do on judging when the dough is properly developed and properly proofed, improving my shaping, etc - all of which will hopefully help. But it sounds like at this point it’d be well worth experimenting with a few of the different flours mentioned by you and others above, and it’s very useful to know that mineral content could be another consideration.
One further question Martin - how much salt did you settle on in the end, when baking with Duchy Strong White at 72% hydration?
No problem at all... I use 12g of salt, for 1.5kg of dough
The other thing I do by the way to improve gluten development, is to use a relatively stiff autolyse (61% hydration) because that gives much more cross-linking between the protein strands. I also knead the autolyse briefly.
After 30-40 mins I add the salt, then after a further 15min rest I mix in enough (100% hydration) starter to get the final hydration I’m aiming for.
To be specific, I autolyse 622g of flour and 378g warm water for 30-40min, then add 12g fine table salt, knead briefly, rest for 15min, then mix in 500g of fully hydrated starter to get a final dough weight of 1500g at 72% and a 33% inoculation
Mixing fully hydrated starter into a stiff autolyse can be a bit ‘interesting’... you can just do it in the mixer - but personally I stretch it out into a big flat sheet (you can get it to 3 or 4 square feet with care!) then spread the starter on it like jam, and fold it up like a parcel. After that I give it at least 6 good rounds of stretch and fold, 20 minutes rest each time :)
Another quick question for all on this thread if you still have the patience! So far I’ve just been using Sainsbury’s standard stoneground wholemeal strong bread flour for the 10% wholemeal component of my dough mix. But I’ve been wondering whether different wholemeal flours might have different sizes/proportions of bran fragments in them, which might impact differently on gluten development and thus the openness (or otherwise) of the crumb. If anyone happens to have views on this and/or suggestions for specific UK wholemeal flours that you’ve had success with, any further tips on this front would be really appreciated. By success here I have in mind achieving irregular very open crumb with a high hydration roughly 9:1 white:ww dough. Thanks!
Mike, at 10% I don't think the wholemeal brand will make much difference. You could always try sieving your WM flour in a fine kitchen sieve prior to weighing it out and do a trial bake with that.
Lance
That’s very helpful Lance, thanks!
I use the Sainsbury’s strong stoneground wholemeal too - I generally chuck in about 50g into the autolyse; and I also use a bit of it in the pre-storage refresh of the starter because it’s got a bit more complex carbohydrates in it than the white stuff.
at those percentages I don’t think the protein content matters much, but I do think it’s worth using the stoneground stuff.
This and your other comment above in response to my question about salt are really helpful Martin - thanks a lot!
I use either strong Canadian white (which is thought to be Marriages) or Duchy white (both from waitrose) with 20% of either of their wholemeal wheat or rye and the Tartine country loaf method: 200 gm levain (from equal parts 50/50 white/wholemeal flour, and water) 800g strong white, 200g strong wholemeal, 20g salt, 750g water. 1hr autolyse. 3 or 4 sets of stretch and folds at half hr intervals during 4 and a half to 5 hour bulk at 78 deg, pre-shape and 20min bench rest, shape and 20min banneton proof, then overnight fridge rest before slashing and baking in enamel casserole pot the next morning. That really works for me but it took me a good few goes to get it right. I found that really working on the pre shape and shape with maximum surface tightness (and minimum added flour) made the biggest single difference. If you find videos helpful, BakeWithJack on YouTube has made some very clear ones recently on all the sourdough processes and the first Tartine book has really clear description and photographs.
Should add that of course there is a tbs of lively starter in that levain, too. And also that the above recipe makes two loaves. Dough divided at the pre-shape.
That’s great, thanks! I’ve been working from a combination of the Tartine and The Perfect Loaf (basic sourdough and “my best sourdough”) recipes and methods. I get decent bread just not yet with the kind of open crumb and oven spring I’m hoping for. But your post and others here have definitely boosted my resolve to switch flours and otherwise just keep practising!
It’d be great to see this picture Martin but it’s not displaying (for me at least) - is it possible something went wrong with the upload?
Sorry! problem with where I was hosting the image... it should hopefully be fixed now :)
Also, here are some shots taken during production
About halfway through the stretch and folds (the plastic cover is from a plant propagator by the way)
loaded into the tin (I stopped using the non-stick tin not long after this - I now prefer a tinned steel one)
Fully proofed (proven?) after about 5-6hrs
finished article
Crumb shot ...
free-standing loaf - they're not always this good tho ;-)
Thanks for sharing Martin - your bread looks great! It’d be really good to see a crumb shot if you do manage to locate one. It’s interesting that it looks like you do your stretch and folds on a surface rather than in a bowl or tub - I think your dough at that stage looks quite a bit stronger than mine does at the same point in the process. Also interesting to see how much rise you get in the final proofing - I’ve been following the Tartine/Perfect Loaf procedure of a 20-minute bench rest then straight into a 38F fridge and I don’t think I see anywhere near the same kind of expansion between shaping and baking.
Aha, I just saw the last two pictures you added Martin. Great oven spring on that boule - this definitely helps to give me something to work towards!
thanks for your kind comments! Obvs I didn’t share the pictures of the loaves that turned out like mutant paving slabs hahahah
One way to get a REALLY strong oven spring on a boule, is to prove it on a sheet of baking parchment and then slide it (parchment and all) straight on to a stone slab that you’ve preheated in the oven (pow!) I used to do this using one of the cheap granite chopping boards you could get from Dunelm mill - until the thermal shock proved too much for it, and it cracked right across :-) a good thick slab of aluminium would be the thing, really... or possibly a few firebricks (like the sole of a traditional oven)
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10 BRICKS X CLAY Firebricks Wood fired Pizza Oven high temperature 230x114x25mm fire brick https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B073VR52K9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_1b.xEb2Y4ZQMJ
The fire bricks could certainly be an interesting experiment. Though I’ve converted from a pizza stone to a Lodge combo cooker - it does mean being limited to baking only boules and only one at a time but it’s made a huge difference for me in terms of glossy blistered crust and an even bake. I was having a nightmare before with our gas oven not holding steam and loaves always coming out unevenly browned on top and pale underneath (even with the pizza stone). Not cheap but I’m not regretting the investment!
No worries!
I have a feeling mind you, that to get an effective oven spring, you need something with a bit more thermal mass than a pizza stone: the ones I've seen are just like a tile... fine for a little thin pizza base but not really going to make much of an impact on a kilo of cold wet dough :-)
Specific heat capacity (the amount of energy required to raise a unit mass by 1 deg C) of bread dough is very high due to the water content... typically about 2.5 to 3 Joules per gramme depending on the hydration. So to get an appreciable effect you should be really be looking for something that's got a comparable thermal mass. Ceramic has a specific heat capacity of around 0.85 Joules per gramme - so for a 1kg loaf you'd need a pizza stone weighing around 2kg... (the other problem is that it's got a pretty lousy thermal conductivity). Hence the idea of the firebricks or 'blue bricks' ...
This is really interesting and helpful. I’d been considering trying a bake with the Dutch oven sitting on a preheated pizza stone (or rather two stones resting on top of each other, so together they make a pretty solid chunk) - just for the first 15mins or so of baking, to see if it helps with oven spring. I suspect the result would just be a burnt base! But it could be interesting to try.
Hi Mike,
definitely an issue I find. I recently got one of Ken Forkish's books. Whilst the flour blends and mixes give good flavour, I tend to dial down the hydration levels a bit. Anecdotally, I find season, temperature and ambient humidity all make a difference. I'm going to compare summer once we get there with autumn/winter.
High protein helps. Sainsbury's strong bread and Allison's Strong and Very Strong White tend to take a good level of hydration. Protein is not the only variable. I've recently purchased some French Label Rouge T80. The info gives protein around 11-12% but I find its hold more water than some higher content bread flours. I tend to use a rye starter which is quite thick or have at least 10% of my flour be wholemeal and/or rye. Rye is not very high in protein, but damn its thirsty!
I know many people don't like stand mixers, but for higher hydration I find they help. A good 15 to 20 mins at speed 2 on a Kenwood helps. For something between 68-75% that can often be enough. For 75-78% the stand mixer then some stretches and folds. Cold proving before shaping gives some extra strength, then shaping and a second proof overnight in the fridge and bake from cold.
I've yet to consistently break the 80% barrier with all white flour. Unless is a ciabatta or similar shape
Aidan