I've been experimenting with my dough a lot but I have to admit that I blindly tried to follow a lot of recipes which suggest 75% (or higher) hydration.
Lately I've finally changed my approach (in particular after watching a video that compared 65% vs 75% vs 85% of hydration with the same flour). Instead pf pushing the water level as high as I possibly can, I went down to 65-67% and focused on the proper fermentation (time and temperature) instead.
And here's the result – AP flour, 3 sloppy stretches and folds with totally random intervals, about 6h of bulk fermentation and 12h in the fridge.
I'm really happy with the oven spring and the crumb which was something that I couldn't always repeat between different batches of dough.
by enceladus71
6 Comments
There are a couple of ways how you can bump up hydration with flour, that cant hold a lot of water. However in my opninion, higher hydration doesnt necessarily mean better bread. I am usually even lower, around 60%
Your bread looks awesome!
Your loaves look gorgeous! I recently just had my best loaf at a 60% hydration, after discovering higher hydration loaves weren’t turning out well for me. I also learned to not be afraid of bulk fermentation times. It really is such an interesting learning process.
Yea man, I’ve been at 68% for months now and never looked back. Just do what works for you!
Do I understand it correctly that high protein flour makes higher hydration easier?
I got 15% protein and have some loaves cold proofing right now in the fridge. The dough was much easier to work with than the previous 13% flour I tried and was incredibly strong when stretching and folding.
I totally agree with you! I’ve been experimenting with higher hydration but ended up going back to around 65%. I feel like even if a flour has a certain protein content, it’s still affected by so many other factors, so you can’t rely on that one figure alone to determine what hydration it can handle. My flour even lists how much water it can absorb as a percentage, which I found quite useful.
Yes – totally here for that. I’d much rather have oven spring and stop obsessing over 70+ hydration! The disappointment when turning out my bannetons on a Saturday morning and seeing them start to spread is too much. At 62-63% I can leave them on the counter, come back to them in 5 mins and they haven’t moved!