Spiral Mixer High Hydration Dough (Double Hydro,Bassinage)
Hi there.
I have been playing around with initial mix hydrations before adding the bassinage on a 120kg dough mixer
What ratio hydration do you mix to incorporate and develop mid consistency dough only consisting of an 100% AP flour with 10.5 and 0.55 ash. I only mix 1st speed.
When I mix above 70% -71% the dough starts to turn into a puddle and it takes a long time to develop the dough
So I have to start with 70% ish but when my total hydro is around 78% it takes a long time to add the bassinage of 8% to reach 78%.
1) What is your take on this? I know this changes from formula to formula,flour to flour and also from mixer to mixer.
2) How do you add the bassinage? , All at once (since it is 1st speed it does not splash), or slowly incorporate the water ? Does it really matter ?
I mix 5 minutes - short auto and another 5 minutes on 1st , add the bassinage and salt until incorporates
I am going for somewhere around 600 revolutions of hook to develop the dough before adding bassinage and salt.
Thanks
If the AP flour were an employee and you were its boss, I'd think you were a slave driver.
Joking aside, here's what I'd do:
Let the dough tell you when to add water and when to stop. Please don't abuse it!
I've applied similar techniques to mix whole-grain and enriched dough in a bread machine (and spiral mixer).
Yippee
Hi Evren,
your question about the initial hydration has no answer because we don't know your flour moisture content or gluten strength (or gluten amount). Strong and dry type 55 flour with 10.5% protein will easily absorb 65% water in the first step and up to 110% water total hydration during bassinage with gluten intact. Weak and moist flours would need about 40-50% hydration in the first step.
I would never start with 70% hydration even if my flour was 12% protein bread flour. The first step is to help gluten form and then develop it by kneading. Only later on the remaining water is added in between the sheets of already developed gluten (bassinage).
To help gluten form, use ice cold water to mix a rather stiff dough (DDT16-18C), medium stiff consistency is best, and let the dough rest for an hour after mixing the first mix. Then knead to develop gluten, incorporate dissolved salt, then oil and only then start your bassinage to any desired hydration level. Drizzle addtitional ice cold water in little by little.
How to do it properly, how the dough looks, is shown here
Watch until the end and read their advice for such kind of dough. Their steps:
Place flour and yeast in mixer (strongly recommended two-speed spiral mixer) and mix;
Pour in 80% of the water and mix at speed 1 until flour and yeast are well mixed; switch to speed 2 for about eight minutes (their speed 2 is 200rpm);
Put salt at dough temperature between 16°-19° and mix until fully incorporated;
Put in oil and run mixer until fully incorporated;
Pour in the remaining water very slowly until completely absorbed;
Total kneading time 20 min;
Final dough temperature: 20°-23°C
If your flour gluten is not strong enough, they recommend to give it strength by 'ventilating' it after mixing, as it rises, i.e. doing punch downs (or stretch and folds) by mixing it a bit more, 1,2 or 3 s&fs in the mixer. It means letting it rest for 10, 15, or 30 min, then knead it for full 3 turns of the dough bowl, then rest again, etc. the benefits of that method of additional aeration for double hydration dough is explained here: https://www.pinsaromana.info/la-ventilazione-impasto-pinsa-romana/
How to do sets of stretch and folds in the mixer as the dough ferments to strengthen its gluten:
The number of revolutions doesn't matter, i.e. 400-600-800 all mean either mixing to homogeneity or initial stages of gluten development depending on flour and on how full is your mixer's bowl. What matters is your flour, how much can it take and how it looks at the end of mixing. Weaker flours won't be able to handle so many, for stronger flours it is not enough.
best wishes,
m.
Thanks for the lengthy message. and the vidoes . Never seen them before.
Your example is exactly how we do ciabatta like bread. But for our country loafs we only mix on first speed. We also go for a short mix. That is at max 600 -800 revs. Minimun oxidisation. Wanna keep the dough light yellow rather than white. Basically we want a very low gluten dev out of the mixer and maybe have 1 S&F. We go for 15% to 17& levain for a long bulk to build strength. That is what I am really curious to see on how people in corporate water on short mix doughs.
I think the crumb and the flavor you get from the method you showed (double hydro) is a bit different than short mixes.
Thanks again for the message. A lot of Intersting points
Then instead of "short auto" give your dough longer rest for its gluten to form and flour particles to hydrate passively.
The initial stages of mixing, the first 5+5min of your mixing on first are essentially to rub flour particles with water to hydrate them. You can achieve the same passively by giving your dough longer rest and thus save on the number of turns during gluten development and use them during bassinage.
Hi, I hope it's ok to reopen this topic, as I find the contents very applicable to my case.
I am having troubles with overkneading my dough in a 30L spiral dough mixer. At this point I'm doubting every step of my process, so I was hoping to get some help.
I am using a strong bread flour, 13.5-14.5% protein, according to the label. The environmental conditions are not optimal, 30°C and high humidity. I am trying to mix a 75% direct dough for pizza. Meant to bulk ferment for 48h. Originally I was adding 2% sugar, salt and oil, and 0.5% instant yeast, but I ditched sugar and oil completely to give the gluten the best possible chance.
I'm working in 6kg flour batches. I started by adding all the water at once and praying for the best, which seemed to have worked on smaller batches, but I only have that mixer for 2 weeks, and had to throw away 40% of my produce since then.
I found this thread when trying to remedy my situation, and adhered to Mariana and Yipee's instructions, which are fairly similar, except the autolyze step. I prefer to use autolyze, since it's supposed to help me save some mixing time and I hoped it would save the dough from overkneading.
My process before reading this thread was to throw all the (ice cold) water into the mixer with all additives at once, and premix it without flour on high speed. After that I would add all 6kg of flour and knead it 4 minutes on low and 15 minutes on high speed. That would lead to varying result, and a very high final temperature of 30-32 degrees. This part is really difficult to remedy, considering the 30°C ambient.
After reading this thread, I tried to lower my hydration to just 70% (total 4.2L), lightly premix (on reverse, to avoid stretching gluten) 3.6L of water with 6kg of flour and let it autolyze for 30 minutes. After that I would add another 300ml of ice cold water, knead to smooth mix, add yeast and salt, knead to smooth again, and slowly bassinage the rest of the ice cold water, which is another 300ml (so 5%). During this process I was trying to closely follow the process and dough texture from videos posted by Mariana.
I am somehow never achieving a strong uniform mix. My dough goes from unevenly mixed or still wet, to heavily over kneaded with nothing in between. When using bassinage, the dough starts to collapse off the hook before I'm even able to finish pouring in the remaining water, and that's just 70% hydration on a fairly strong 14% flour. I am clearly going very wrong somewhere and I would appreciate advice from someone experienced.
might be the issue. No matter what the flour specs say, you’ve got to trust your senses and how the dough behaves rather than sticking to the 'norm'.
If I were you, I’d start the first round of mixing with about 60% hydration, then gradually increase it until the dough tells you to stop.
To counter the warm temperature, I’d freeze the flour and chill the mixer bowl with some reusable ice packs before mixing.
Yippee
Alright, so combat the temperature with all available tools. Thanks for the advice. Seems like I'll also have to go back to searching for flour.
Mix - however you mix ît
Leave for an hour - unmixed
Mix again 2 or 3 times with an hour or so between
Rise and bake.
Forget about other instructions for now. Enjoy!
That's not really enough for what I'm trying to achieve,but thanks!
Good luck! Enjoy!
Dear Tron,
your trouble stems from the fact that in hot and humid environment your flour is too moist. So, when bakers at home have flours at 5-10% moisture content, bakers in less humid areas have standard 14% moisture content in their flours, your flour reaches nearly 20% moisture content in hot and humid environment.
For example in Thailand in September air humidity averages 90%, bakers flour kept at 30C will have average moisture content of approximately 17-18% (the line in the middle with the black diamonds is for white flour, black squares - whole wheat flour, triangles - for whole wheat kernels moisture on the vertical axis and relative air humidity at 30C on the horizontal axis)
So, when you start at 70% hydration, you add so much water to already very moist flour, you create a very, VERY loose dough with too much water to start with. In such soft dough with so much water at such high temperature, gluten will not form with ease, because protein molecules are separated from each other with a lot of water in between them. Adding more water after that and kneading on high, makes it even worse, for you are in essence overworking a dough with a little gluten present in it.
So, the solution for you is given in the comment that I posted above : start with 40-50% baker's hydration dough, mix it with ice cold water: per 6kg of flour add 2.4-3l water. You most likely would have to cover the dough with ice packs during autolyze, because gluten forms best at below 20C. Alternatively, take the dough out of the mixer and refrigerate during autolyze on baking sheet(s), this way it will also be cooler for the next stage of bassinage and gluten development. Then add as much water as you want to your bread dough in small portions along with the other ingredients as per recipe. Remember, that your 75% hydration dough made from your moist flour is my 105% hydration dough made from my dry flour.
Your flour
100g flour
75g water
Your flour is made of 18g water + 82g dry matter
Total: 93g water per 82 g dry matter, per each gram of dry matter there is 1.13g of water in your dough (113% absolute dough hydration), this is a super wet dough.
My flour has 5% moisture content, our place is very dry and kept rather cool all the time.
My 75% hydration dough would be
100g flour (5g water + 95g dry matter)
75g water
Total: 80g water per 95g dry matter, or 0.84g of water per each gram of dry matter. A dough with 84% absolute hydration.
For my flour to have the same absolute hydration as yours, i.e. to obtain the dough with the same consistency, I would have to add more than a liter of water per each 1kg of my flour. This would give me a perfect batter for pancakes, actually. A 105% baker's hydration dough.
In absolute terms each gram of dry flour matter in your dough has 35% more water than mine. Your dough at 75% baker's hydration is super wet, like a pancake dough, whereas mine at 75% baker's hydration is merely a soft dough, rather medium consistency, what I usually make for plain white bread. All of it is due to the moisture content of flours kept at different temperatures in areas with different air humidity.
Best wishes,
m.
Thank you so much. This is the answer I was looking for. I am thinking to move the mixer to air conditioned room and freeze the flour overnight before kneading. An alternative would be to use 100% cold biga, since it would be starting at very low temperature anyway. I guess the point is that my flour is already wet. Are there any tools that could help me better understand the condition of my dough? I am of course using thermometers, but is there something that I could use to measure the humidity of my dough?
One more question, should I be concerned about acidity, if I autolyze my dough with yeast (fermentolyze)? If so, are there any home baker tools I could use to measure and control it?
This link gives an industry standard way to measure the moisture content (AACCI Approved Method 44–15.02):
https://bakerpedia.com/processes/moisture-in-flour/
Basically, weigh some flour, heat it in an oven to drive off the moisture, and weigh it again.
TomP
Thank you. I just finished doing it in a similar way. I also measured humidity in the room where I store and mix the flour. The temperature averages 30°C, and the humidity measured with a cheap co2 detector I had in the storage is at 80%.
I "baked" 200g of flour for over 2 hours at 95°C (a bit over 200F) and then I let it cool down for an hour. The weight after that process was 182g. It seems like I didn't bake it long enough.
Tron,
for preferments and dough acidity, please use a pH-meter for food , or a pH paper strip for the ranges of pH that you are dealing with, and a titration kit for total acidity. The links are just for examples of what I am talking about. You can find better prices and different tools for the same job.
For humidity, please use a digital hydrometer near the place where you store your flour. Then use the graph that I gave you for 30C ambient temperature to determine moisture content of your flour once you know the ambient relative humidity. Your flour is exceptionally high in protein, way too much for pizza, so it actually needs a bit more water than regular breads flour at 10-12% protein. Should you store your flour frozen or in a cooler air-conditioned room (let's say at 24 or 25C), then you'd need another table or graphs for flour moisture content determination. Frozen flour needs to be defrosted for 24 hours prior to its use in dough mixing.
With biga, meaning stiff or very stiff cold preferment, depending on biga's size, I would not bother with double hydration, just add water to chunks of biga and flour+salt+oil+sugar mix in your mixer little by little until you get the desired consistency. Consistency of your dough is the final judge of whether you got your dough water/hydration right. Once the consistency is right there where you want it, stop adding water and weight the total dough to determine how much water it needed for biga-dough process.
Instead of folding dough several times which is a no-no for the flour with such a high gluten content and with biga on top of that (both stiffen the crumb excessively), just let it rise to the max, it will matter more for the final pizza's crumb and crust.
best wishes,
m.
Thank you so much, Mariana. I'm taking notes on everything you shared. I have a few clarification questions, if that's OK.
First, should I add all the water at once with the biga to my mixer, start it on first speed, and then slowly add the mixture of remaining dry ingredients? Did I get that correctly? Would that also work for a 100% biga dough, meaning no more flour would be added?
After removing the dough from the mixer, I should just cover it and let it rise all the way before forming pizza balls? Can I apply one fold and stretch to form a bulk ball first?
I measured the humidity of my flour by the oven method. I took it to the extreme by baking flour spread on a ceramic plate at 150°C for almost 3 hours. The weight loss was just 12% which is not what I expected. Maybe the local flour is made for the local weather conditions? I'm not sure.
Hi Tron,
First, should I add all the water at once with the biga to my mixer, start it on first speed, and then slowly add the mixture of remaining dry ingredients?
After removing the dough from the mixer, I should just cover it and let it rise all the way before forming pizza balls?
Can I apply one fold and stretch to form a bulk ball first?
- Sure, its neat, for as long as you realize that is an equivalent of just one more turn of the spiral in your mixer. All it does is to stretch and fold dough on itself as it rotates : )
RE: testing flour moisture at home. Your flour got rehydrated by the moisture in the air as it cooled down for one hour before you weighed it. It takes only two hours of exposure to the air to fully rehydrate flour by the moisture in the air! Also, the lab process of measuring flour moisture content is a bit more technical and requires certain equipment pieces that keep both the containers for flour samples and the flour after drying it bone dry and properly weighed. I never even tried to do it at home. No need, for as long as you experimentally determine your flour's absorption capacity with 25 g of water and a bit of flour, maximum of 50 g of flour, as I described before. Flour water absorption capacity number is more important, because flour absorbs more or less water to achieve desired dough consistency depending on many factors, not only its moisture content, but also water hardness, flour protein content, flour fiber content, % of damaged starch due to milling practices, % of sugar content of flour, etc.
I have biga made of 4kg of flour and 2.2L of water which I thought would be 55% hydration, but now I know that it's actually much more. I planned to try to mix a 100% biga dough at 75% hydration, but that would result in 115% total hydration according to your explanation. I'll instead assume 20% flour hydration straight out of the bag and I came up with a formula that to make 1.45kg of 81% total hydration dough, I'll need to use 1kg of flour and just 450ml of water, which would make it 800g of dry flour and 650ml of total water.
Based on that, I'll go for a 6.7kg of my wet flour and 3L liter of water to get 9.7kg of dough with 81% total hydration. Wish me luck.
During the mixing of above formula, the dough looked really dry, so I decided to get back to the drawing board for a second. I changed my assumption of comparing to a 0% humid flour, and compared with a 10% humid flour instead. That's because according to Google, flour is on average 12-14% water, and I would assume most recipes are written for that average flour. I still decided to thread on the safe side.
Following this logic, I calculated the following equivalency:
70% hydration dough @10% humid flour is equal to 89% hydration dough @0% humid flour, which is then equal to 51 hydration dough @20% humid flour. I bassinaged my dough with additional 6%, wince originally I planned to do a 45. The dough is still pretty dry even with that additional water. I started with biga, so I was able to bake some already, and the results are simply not good.
I used the spiral mixer minimally, because I'm scared of overkneading, then as soon as a fairly smooth pumpkin formed, I removed the dough and applied 4 stretch and folds every half an hour, then I let it rest for another 2 hours and formed pizza balls. I baked the first one after another hour, when the volume doubled.
I have a spiral mixer, and in the winter when my kitchen is around 70-degree F with a relatively low humility I would make my 50% WW baguettes at 75% hydration (probably end up with a higher hydration after I develop the dough with wet hands post mixing) without issues, I do occasionally have a dough fall apart during mixing for unknow reasons. Now in the heart of summer where my kitchen is around 80-degree F with a high humility, mixing my 75% hydration baguettes would never work so I had to drop the hydration by 8-10% to make it work so it wouldn't fall apart during spiral mixing. Now, I usually aim at mixing a dough at around 75-degree F but if I use ice cold water then it would mix better but it would screw up my dough temp. Nonetheless, every kitchen, four, and technique is different so you will have to experiment to find what work for you.
I can't help solve your temperature problem but I found a link from an Italian mixer manufacturer which does a good job of running down the pros and cons of using the three main types of mixers along with a list of markers to show when the gluten mesh has been developed enough.
https://www.italforni.it/en/2021/07/06/commercial-dough-mixer-machine/
TomP