September 9, 2015 - 3:52pm
Too Much Water
This is a little embarrassing, but i finally calculated the recipe's ive been making at over, way over 100% hydration. While some of the breads work out, like ciabatta, pita and baguette, the loaves like batards and boules have been suffering.
Over-proofing and poor yeast conditions have been solved with help from the pros of TFL, but I think i just realized my water is waaay too high.
Dont laugh, but with 2750g of total flour, thats including the flour used in the starter, i was adding approx one gallon of water.
Thats probably ridiculous right? For a 70% dough goal, that would be about twice the water needed. Good Lord.
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Yeah, ~3785 ml in a gallon, so 3785/2750 is ~138% hydration! I have to assume this isn't white flour or you would be making pancakes. What is the hydration of the starter? Does the gallon of water include that in the starter? It is impressive that you can work with that level of hydration at all.
bobs red mill organic. The starter is 100%. lol no i didnt include the water from the starter, i figured for this post didnt need further mistakes, the original water amount was bad enough
i do a two hour autolyse. After that the dough is actually pretty great, like a nice ball of gluten. A little flour added and ive got a nice, soft, fluffy blob; it feels like a pillow. However, later in the process water comes out some so gotta add flour throughout.
I suspect though, for Bobs Red Mill organic whole wheat, that the water absorption is high, so going down to 100% wouldnt be that far off from someones 80% with their flour.
With whole wheat, and two hours, you might want to try adding the salt to the whole wheat soaker first then mix up the dough. Adding salt later can bring out water in the dough but with some kneading it can be worked back in. Don't know if that info is useful to your method of operation.
soaker uppers you can add to lower the hydration. (don't forget to also add a little salt)
Just give the additions about an hour after adding and there will be a great difference! Keeping them chilled is not only recommended for storage but the temperature drop will help offset the rapid fermentation going on with high hydration.
You can also refigure the recipe and use only part of the dough spreading thin and chilling the rest quickly for tomorrow's bake. If you need help with the math just ask, there are Loafers here that thrive on such puzzles!
Mini, interesting. Im surprised you haven't said "stop adding so much water."
I will be baking again in 3 days and going to try the following recipe to get six loaves, maybe about 800g each.
2300g whole wheat flour, basically one 5 lb bag of Bobs
500g 100% hydrated starter culture
60g salt
water still not sure, thinking about trying 70%. The water addition im calculating would be 1785g?
Also thinking maybe theres no need to autolyse. Not sure yet what it has done for me, since Bobs Red MIll flour doesn't have that big of bran in it.
I figured you did that already. :) that comes out to almost 80% (1785 + 250 divided by 2300 + 250) x 100 = 79.8%
to calculate hydration: take total water weight and divide by total flour weight and multiply by 100
What's the total dough weight? 5 x 800 or 5 x 1000?
Ok, lets just deal with the bag of flour ... 2300 +250 (flour in the starter) = 2550 total flour minus 30% = 1785 and minus 250 (water in the starter) = 1535g of water is what is needed for 70%
I guess in the end im looking for 3 800g boules and 3 1000g batards. thats 5,400g
the total weight of the flour looks like 2550; the bag of flour is 2300 + half of the 100% 500g starter
in the next bake. So many thanks
Math has never been my strong point.
Thats why i ive just been adding water until all flour is wet. Once i saw bakers math i ran the other way.
that didnt seem too bad though And I think that gives me a good foundation for future batches.
"Good Lord"
My granddad used to say that a lot.
BTW don't think 80% is close to 100%. In dough terms it's a big difference.
80% and 100%- big diff. I didn't eloquently explain myself as to the real meaning of the thoughts in my head. No worries.
2300g whole wheat flour, basically one 5 lb bag of Bobs
500g 100% hydrated starter culture
60g salt
water still not sure, thinking about trying 70%. The water addition im calculating would be 1785g?
1535g of water is what is needed for 70% 4395g total dough weight. (give it another teaspoon of water for 4400g :)
Now if somebody would plug into a dough calculator we might figure out how much flour you would need for the larger amount of dough.
If i came out with 5 loaves that would be plenty, six is usually extra
shoot for 2% salt or a bit less,
51g
Did it the hard way... I rounded up a few numbers...
70% hydration x 1.23
500g starter 100% hydration 616g starter 100% hydration
starter flour 10.9% 250g 308g
starter water 10.9% 250g 308g
---------------------------------------------------------
Flour 100% 2300g 2830g
Water 67% 1540g 1895g
salt 2.35% 60g 74g
total dough weight 4400g 5415g
That looks right, but I get 9.8% starter flour. The difference is that I used the total flour of 2550 vs just the 2300 for example. I know people do it both ways so I just wanted to throw that out there. Either way it is not a large amount of starter and can easily be increased if desired.
I also want to mention that even though the water says 67%, do note that this is without the starter water and the total is 70% as MO indicated. I just didn't want that to be confusing to anyone (or maybe I made it more confusing ha).
Is the extra salt there because it is 100% whole wheat?
I get what your saying about the 67%, Maverick, many thanks.
theres extra salt because Im kind of rounding and making up for all the flour i had to add back during shaping, since i was over watering.
I calculater a closer number of 51g for the 4400g batch.
getting used to all this help! Im kicking myself for not posting sooner in the process. Thanks sooo much
It's good to experiment, but maybe not when using a whole bag of flour :)
true, but only $6 !!
also oddly enough, most of my batches have actually been pretty good. Thats why i say i think the bobs red mill whole wheat might need more water than another kind of flour
This is my last bread, too flat, which inspired this post, made it a few days ago. So i just sliced today and im very happy with the inside, open and airy, cooked, soft, flavorful, yadda yadda. Just didnt rise is all. So while it was crazy to have been doing 138% hydration breads, somehow that amount worked most of the way.
hydration and still make a loaf manageable. Tangzhong. It is a water roux and it involves taking 5% of the flour and gelling it in part of the water (weight of flour x 5) by cooking it. This gives you the advantages of high hydration dough but a dough that will be stiffer. You can try it and see if you like the effect. It usually makes a softer crumb with more volume centred loaves. (Subtract or take flour and water from the recipe so be sure to measure them first.)
5% of 2550g = 128g of flour x5 = 640g of water (768g)
About an hour before mixing up the dough...
Set a small saucepan on the scale. Add flour and water. Rescale for total weight of pan and ingredients. Stir them together until smooth and let autolyse for half an hour. Add heat, stirring constantly until the liquid is just short of boiling and starts to thicken. Remove from heat, allow to cool. Set back on the scales and compare with starting weight. Add ice cubes or cold water (not recipe water) to replace any lost weight. When cooled add to dough.
As this will change the dough feel, you can then add more water to the dough to get whatever dough feel you prefer to work with.
and that the 70% hydration dough needed more water, you could easily mix up the Tangzhong add 500g water an have another 500g water handy while mixing. You may not want all of it but you can mix up a 90% hydration feel dough with a higher hydration for more oven spring.
If I take the 70% hydration (2300 flour bag) recipe and add 500g water... The hydration is.... 90%
Are you using bread forms to help hold the loaf shape in the final rise? I see evidence on the larger loaf.
I was thinking as I made this last WFO batch "well i guess close to 100% is better than 138%"
yes im using rattan round and banneton baskets. I think my jargon is accurate.
Im also thinking possibly I need one more S&F round after a bench rest, instead of doing it just twice. Might make the dough stronger.
need for a big lump of dough the easy way I do it is to take the weight of the lump I want in the end say 5,000 g an divide it by 1 for the flour plus what ever hydration you want say .80 (for 80 %.) 5000/1.8 = 2778 g of flour and 5000 - 2778 = 2222 g of water . To check 2222/2778 = 79.99% hydration. then you add 2% salt and you get salt of 56 g (2778 times .02) n So total weight of the dough is 5056 g.
For a 100% whole wheat like yours. ,I would be at 80% hydration to open the crumb up, make it light and airy. It won't be unmanageable at all. Just do a 2 hour autolyse of the flour and water.
Also, If I had your fine beer on hand, i would use it for the water in this bread too!
Happy SD baking
could work the dough at 80% instead of 90. Normal routine for me is two hour autolyse, cant fit it in every time but I try.
There must be someone else around here who uses or has used bobs red mill whole wheat
It is summer but somebody is surely making sourdough from Bob's WW flour. Hang in there. I don't have that particular flour available but what I do notice is that this flour is often combined with other flours.
is fine with me, Mini. Your calculations and my small additions are working and making bread. I just have to bake a little longer thats all. The whole process is much easier now that im not using 136% hydration!!!