Hydration with AP flour
Hi all,
This is my first post. Firstly, thanks to all the posters out there for your interesting discussions and helpful advice, which I have picked up just by browsing!
I've been baking for a few years, originally starting from Ken Forkish's book. He uses mainly bread flour and typically uses hydrations above 70%. A few months ago, I decided to try to use all-purpose in place of bread flour, and have taken my cue for adjusting hydration based on a few recipes here and there, which I took to be written for AP flour. It was my impression that, even with AP, appropriate hydration is about 68%.
However, I eventually found that I can't hydrate greater than ~64% without sacrificing strength and shape. This is surprisingly low to me, since the range I have seen in my reading is 68-80%. Can anyone out there confirm or correct me?
My standard recipe uses a starter (100% hydration). It is 30% whole wheat flour and I use King Arthur whole wheat and AP flours. The full recipe is as follows:
300 g whole wheat flour
550 g white flour
490 g water
300 g starter (100% hydration)
20 g salt
My bread turned out great with excellent shape, crust and crumb. Just wanted to know if I'm off on something. Thanks for your input!