Making Low Hydration Bread with Arthritis/Tendonitis?
Recently, I have been very interested in making some low hydration breads once flour becomes more readily available. I have made a few low hydration breads in the past, but there are a few issues other than the lack of flour that are kind of making me feel more than just a little intimidated.
Now, I’ve made low hydration breads before, but I’ve run into some problems. The first problem is that I have tendon issues that prevent me from kneading bread by hand, so I have to use a standing mixer to work all of my bread. My KitchenAid Professional 5 Plus has no problem working 50% hydration, but when I’ve tried to make lower hydration bread (around 30-45 percent) the machine has a very rough time mixing and kneading. There were couple of times where I thought the thing was going to break.
So I find myself feeling very confused right now. I would like to make a couple will hydration loaves, but I just feel very confused as to how I should go about doing it. I’m scared to use my mixer and I really can’t work by hand.
Have any of you ever run into an issue like this? If so, I would like to hear what advice you can offer. I like 50% hydration breads, but I really would like to try making something with a lower water content. I just can’t see any way out to do it all things considered.
First of all: why do you want to make even lower hydration? If you use more water, you will end up with more volume, thus more bread...I can imagine some low hydration breads are nice, but 30-45% is ramen noodle level and that must be done by hand unless you have special equipment. Even 50% is already hard to knead.
You somehow need to get everything into one mass and then can use a pasta machine to at least hydrate all the flour and it kinda works as kneading.
I'm wondering the same thing, why so dry? In my experience with both gluten and gluten free baking, less water means dry bread. Are you perhaps making a cracked seed and grain bread like a Skandinavian style health bread? Without knowing your goal, I can't really help. Do you have a recipe you're following?
The bread and I am interested in making right now is called Pan Candeal, a white Spanish loaf with the hydration level of 45%.
The 30-45 percent loaves are called Pane di Pasta Dura alla Ragusano, a hard Sicilian bread made with semolina.
My family traditionally baked wet bread, probably in the route of 65%. However, in studying traditional Sicilian bread and pizza, I’m seeing that most recipes are around 50% hydration. Traditionally, Sicilian breads are made up of white flour (called Tipo 00), semolina or durum flour, or a mixture of both. Sometimes bread flour (which is called Manitoba flour) is used in combination with or a place of 00, such as the recipe for Sicilian brioche. It’s similar to French brioche, but is shaped differently and has lemon and orange zest in the dough.
Sicilian bread dough tends to run more on the dryer side, which makes it very easy to shape. And while on the subject of shaping, many Sicilian breads are real works of art (see http://panisnostrum.blogspot.com/2011/01/pan-tradicional-en-sicilia.html For some examples) After baking one, you feel like you’ve painted the Sistine chapel, except you can eat it. ?
I believe those doughs are either mixed with machines that can deal with low hydrations or by hand in smaller amounts. You definitely need a good amount of force and pressure and I feel it might not be possible for you to achieve that.
You could try mixing together what you can, let it rest for 30 min., combine what you can, rest again and so on until you have one mass. But I don't know if that will succeed.
Hi! I’ve noticed you got a lot of comments asking why you would make this type of dough instead of just saying they don’t have a helpful answer, so hopefully this will be helpful to you or someone else: I love making bagels and the recipe I use is low water because I boil them. I do what Japanese udon makers do and I put the dough in a plastic bag, remove the air, tie or seal it and step on it. Just step a few times, open the bag, fold the dough and repeat. Hope this helps.