High Hydration
I started baking bread because
- I love eating good bread (or even mediocre bread with good stuff on top)
- I need to avoid white flour for health reasons (see above for loving eating)
- The local artisan bakeries each offered one multigrain bread, and a rye bread maybe once a week; the bakery breads did not have the nice additions that they put into their white breads, like onions, olives, cheese, etc.
- The bakery whole grain breads I'm sure met the legal requirements for naming but probably were no higher in whole grains than they needed to be
I started out with simpler (mostly white with a little whole grain) breads. When those were edible, I moved on to higher whole grain % bread. That meant high hydration (Hamelman says anything above 70% hydration requires more careful handling; these breads were often in the 75-80% hydration range, and sometimes higher).
It took a long time, but now I can make Hamelman's 100% whole wheat pretty well 100% whole wheat "workday" bread formula. And I've had some good results with formulas from "The Rye Baker" https://theryebaker.com/ and the book of the same title).
So today, I tried Hamelman's Black Bread Formula, a 60% medium rye at 68% hydration, with an old bread and coffee soaker. The dough came together easily and was easy to handle through pre-shaping, shaping, proofing (came right out of the bannetons, no sticking), and scoring. Black Bread Photos
I first thought, "Hey, I'm finally getting good at this". And then reality set in. The formula has 68% hydration, under the "high hydration" limit. It was just much easier to handle than the 80-85% hydration breads I have been making.
Maybe I'll get the hang of high hydration doughs before I'm too old to be allowed near an oven.
Some things I have been learning about working with mostly whole wheat loaves that might help -
1. Sift out the bran, turn it into a soaker or a scald, and add it back later, once the dough's gluten has been established. You have to remember that the water in the bran soaker/scald will add to the hydration, though not perhaps all of it. Or just leave it out altogether, until you are happy with your loaves.
2. Keep the hydration on the low side when you mix and knead the dough. Use enough to fully hydrate the flour during mixing, and no more. You can add more little by little during the S&F sessions. Doing this is a little annoying as it's hard to get the water worked into the dough enough to have all the layers merge, but give the dough short rests if necessary and it will work.
3. If the dough doesn't seem to want to build up enough strength during shaping (IOW it's very slack), keep stretching it out and rolling it up again and it will usually tighten up. If it doesn't, refrigerate the dough overnight and shape into a loaf the next day. Sometimes after this the dough will build strength that it wouldn't before.
These things have helped me quite a lot.
Tom
2a. I just figured out how to adjust the mixing times in "Bread" for my Kitchenaid stand mixer instead of the commercial mixers that Hamelman uses in "Bread". If I double the time at speed 2 in the KA (the KA at speed 1 is pretty much the same as the commercial mixers), it should behave more like the book expects.
The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book is a book from 2003 that has some 100% whole wheat recipes in it which are lower hydration. You might find it in a library. I loved the taste of high hydration doughs, but I finally got tired of dealing with them and went back to lower hydration. My favorite everyday bread now is a version of Laurel's Basic Whole Wheat Bread. Hers is 100% whole wheat.
I made two changes to her recipe. I converted the active dry yeast amounts to instant dry yeast and I make it with 50% Bob’s Red Mill stone-ground wheat flour and 50% high protein white flour similar to King Arthur Bread flour. The hydration is 73% and it is wonderful to work with. I don’t even flour the bread board and it is slightly tacky and easy to divide and shape. I have recently been thinking about trying it with 100% whole wheat, although I do love the current version I am making.
I have made this recipe for years, but in the past I was getting loaves that were more dense and drier than the ones I am getting now. I am not sure if it is the flour, the yeast conversion, or the proofing box that has made the difference. The proofing box runs at 72° which is room temperature, so I tend to discount it’s impact.
I need to keep my glycemic index (speed of conversion of food to blood glucose) down, so I try to use as much whole grains as I can, at some sacrifice to volume and openness of the crumb. So I'm trying to improve my skills with high hydration doughs.
Longer mixing times at speed 2 and more folds during bulk fermentation should help.