Comments on: Bread Hydration Experiment

By: derobert

derobert — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 19:22:20 +0000

I'm not sure. Sugar melts (and this becomes liquid) during baking, but I'd not expect it to do that when mixing/kneading. Sounds like a good question for the site.

By: danny

danny — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 14:44:31 +0000

Hi, thanks for the information. I want to ask something maybe someone can give me the answer. currently i'm working with 45% hydration dough. i've been working with this recipe quite some time with no problem at all. one day i made a mistake of not adding the sugar into the recipe, and when i mix the dough instead of forming a ball, it ended up with individual clumps. i did the mistake twice in a row with same result. then i realized that i forgot to add the sugar into it. with the sugar added, the dough as usual, form a ball and ended up good. my question, how does sugar affect the hydration of the dough? thanks

By: Jim Hart

Jim Hart — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 12:35:32 +0000

What I've read and informally tried is a higher backing temps. Even to the point of setting the oven to a higher than baking temperature for the preheat to get a faster recovery to baking temperature when you open the oven to put the bread in.

With a higher baking temperatures than 350F... More like 500 - 450F.

By: Cerberus

Cerberus — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:13:39 +0000

Excellent! Very informative. I can't wait for your folding report...

By: derobert

derobert — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:08:12 +0000

The loaves were baked long enough to get to 200°F internal. When I cut into them, all appeared to be adaquately baked (and none were dried out), so I think the baking time right enough (though I suppose that leaving them in longer would have browned the 70% and 80% loaves more). Also, once the starch is geletanized, I wouldn't expect the crumb to change much.

Doing all the high-hydration methods on both a 80% and a 60% loaf (to the extent possible, stretch and fold will be much harder...) would be an interesting future experiment. Or maybe a 70% and 90%, both of those will probably work with the high-hydration techniques.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:46:01 +0000

350F is very low for high hydration breads. What determined how long you baked the loaves? An 80% loaf will need to bake longer than a 60% loaf. You may have isolated just hydration, but not in a method that anybody would actually bake the loaves.

By: sobachatina

sobachatina — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:27:25 +0000

Well done. This is very interesting.

I am interested to see how the hydration affects slow-fermented, free form, artisan loaves.

By: rumtscho

rumtscho — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:33:46 +0000

Congratulations on becoming our first author! Thank you for writing the nice post, this was a good experiment and quite informative.