May 14, 2017 - 12:06pm
Hydration issues when adding carrot to dough
hi there
i have a really good recipe for a light rye bread but want to add carrot to it but am wondering about hydration levels. It has 325g strong bread flour and 150g rye and 375g coffee (coffee really works by the way) but I love carrot in it - rye, carrot and caraway work really well together. I was going to add 60g gratef carrot. My question is will I leave hydration as is or cut back a bit? Thanks
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combinations, too! Of course, I think that rye really goes with everything...
I have started using nutritiondata.self.com information for the water content of anything that I might be adding to a recipe. I then include that in my "water" count for the dough when calculating what I want my starting hydration to be (depending on the flour mix, usually 65-75% for me). I then have room to include more water later as I'm mixing and kneading the dough, if it is feeling too dry (since not all of the water in the adder will be released in to the dough, even after baking). I find that I most often end up adding enough water during the mix to end up around 78-80% hydration on a straight dough, and maybe up to 83% or so including the water in a "wet" adder (such as the rye - banana loaf that I'm enjoying right now).
Using this info for the carrots: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2383/2 then the 60g of grated carrot that you want to add will include 60 x 0.883 = 52.98g of water. You have 475g of flour, so your 375g of coffee brings you to 79% hydration to start with, so adding another 53g would put you at just over 90% hydration for the baked loaf if all of the water in the carrots is released during the bake.
Personally, I'd drop the coffee down to 325g and see how the dough feels, and then gradually add more if it feels like the dough needs it. Keep in mind that the carrots will be releasing water throughout the bake, and so will leave the finished crumb feeling and tasting more "damp" ("moist" if you have worked it out right - "soggy" if you haven't!) than the equivalent amount of straight water that will evaporate out during the bake. As a wild guess, I'd think that you'll end up adding back in enough coffee during the mix to bring your overall hydration (including the carrots) to around 85% or so...
Please do report back on what you went with and how it turns out --- it definitely sounds like one that I would like to try out in the near future!
thanks so much for that info - using nutriondata is a great idea - ive just signed up...ill give it a go this morning and i also have another recipe for carrot and sesame which i can give myself a rough approximation with...i let you know. in the original recipe i had the original amount of coffee called for was 325g. This was too dry for me so i increased it to 375g. Ill go back to original amount as you suggest and see how we go....
grated carrot in the coffee and then adding it to the dough when cool? No changes in hydration until after the dough has been mixed and allowed to soak up the moisture. (This will also lower the chance of rope, a fungus in dirt, ruining the
doughbread through use of raw root vegetables.)thats a good idea but im wondering if the carrot would get lost in the coffee?
or cook it then grate it for orange flecks in the crumb. How much carrot goes into the dough?
what is rope ruining?
a fungus and that's where it should stay, in the dirt. It doesn't always get washed off completely and when combined with flour/dough can spoil the finished bread. Baking at normal bread temps doesn't kill it. If it gets into the dough a wet spot may appear in the middle of the loaf growing outwards in about 3 to 4 days. It is sticky and classical signs are "strings" as slices are pulled apart from each other. The smell is like over ripe melons.
Boiling or cooking root vegetable before adding to bread dough will prevent this and so will keeping your root veggies separated from your flour bin and supplies. More in the archives.
jesus....must watch out for the fungus...well ive gone ahead and taken your advice; grated carrot into coffee and cooked with flour, etc...great idea. I still had to add another 20g water but its at a good sticky rye texture. Now lets see how we go. Pictures later. thanks so much for your advice.
i have no crumb shot but the bread is good - nice amount of moisture. Might increase carrot the next time as i was hoping for a hint of carroty sweetness . I have a feeling that the coffee, caraway and rye are just too strong for it. Having said that better tasting carrots would help. I had previously made a traditional Latvian bread - they like carrots in their bread in Latvia - but in that recipe the caraway is substituted by carrot i.e. there were two different versions one with a little sugar and caraway, the other with carrot. I used 12% carrot as the Latvian recipe does. I get the flecks, get the moisture but no flavour...by the way I used 345g water with 60g carrots instead of 375g warter without carrots. A difference of 30g.
So it was:
150g wholemeal rye (31.5%)
325g bread flour (68.5%)
1.5 tsp caraway seeds
325g coffee (68.5%)
20g water - was added into dough as it was to dry (4%)
60g grated carrot (12.5%)
1 tsp fast action yeast
1.5 tsp salt
thanks for all the advice
thank you Mini Oven, I knew about it but not where it came from.
Leslie