June 14, 2020 - 4:06am
Flour Vs water shaping high hydration dough
So I've been making some 80+% mainly white flour loaves recently. Ive found on my searches that's it's suggested usually to do a wet pre shape and floured shape. With higher hydration doughs I find it much easier to use water for both, is there any reason why it's better to use flour for shaping the final?
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Only thing I can think of is - if the surface of the dough is very wet before it goes in a banneton it could increase the chance of sticking to it, unless a lot of flour is used and that can create other issues. What works for you is what you should do.
Hmm yeh I did worry about that when i first started doing it, so ive been flouring the banneton pretty heavily with rice flour , but hasnt seemed to affect my loves too much? Or maybe it is but i am too inexperienced to have realised yet
For a while there I was doing my final shaping with water. When I went back to doing it with flour I found that the tension in the dough held better until baking time and my oven spring improved. I think having the outer skin of the dough wetter during final shaping perhaps reduced the tension that I built during final shaping vs retaining the tension built when using flour. I suppose the only way to test this would be to do two loaves and do one with water and the other with flour for final shaping. I only bake one loaf at a time so haven’t thought to test this.
Your logic would definitely make sense and I hadnt thought about that. Is there a reason you went back to flouring? Maybe I just need to keep at it with flour until my skills get a bit better. I also only do one loaf at a time, but maybe I will do a back to back test one day.
Thanks
You have to do whatever works for you. I was using water and thought that the tension wasn't as good as it should have been so that is when I switched back to flour for shaping. My impressions have been comparing both that flour is messier but the tension and resultant ear and oven spring were better with flour than water.
Benny