Hydration for German Recipes with American Flour
Hi All,
I am looking for practical advice adjusting the hydration in some recipes so that I can use American flour. I am working out of Brötchen Backen by Lutz Geißler (2021) - „Baking Rolls“.
The recipe for a basic roll, or Schrippe, uses 550 Flour and calls for a hydration of 58%. The challenge is that I am using American flour which doesn‘t have exactly the same qualities. My experience working with German flour is that it is more extensible and takes less water. Here in the USA I am using either All Purpose or Artisan Bakers Plus from Central Milling. If I put the dough together at 58% hydration I can hardly knead it because it is so stiff. This is more in the hydration range for an American Bagel. (Interestingly there is a bagel recipe in the book which is at 53% hydration.) What is the best way forward?
Option 1: Simply add more water until I got a workable dough. -probably end up around 65%
Option 2: Someone else has experience with this can provide a general percentage increase?
Option 3: Somehow spend another few years baking in Germany so that I can learn what consistency the dough should be :)
I can improvise but since I don‘t know what the dough should feel like in the recipe I am reluctant to do this. The roll may come out far differently if I dramatically increase the hydration. For instance the last time it came out much more like a small piece of baguette than the roll I was aiming for.
Thanks for your thoughts and advice!!
Here's a link about German and American flours:
https://www.seitanismymotor.com/baking-guidelines/comparing-german-flours/
It says they are very hard to compare because they are fundamentally different. It does not say what is also the case that the German flours are probably not malted, but both those Central Milling flours are.
At a minimum I would expect US flours to need more water, as the linked article says. I don't have personal experience here and I don't think I can be more helpful.
TomP
I have no idea about US flours, but they are evidently classified for the "strength" quality, which is more or less expressed by the W measure in German, or Italian, or French classification.
A 550 flour means this flour has 550mg of ashes for 100g of flour, or 0,55% ashes. This is a white flour, it would fall in the "tipo 00" category in Italy, the "whitest". So, this is something very far from wholemeal, the furthest.
Regarding protein content and strength, you could try to guess the strength of the flour by looking, in some instruction manual of some different bread machines, what kind of "W" value they call for, for that kind of roll. Probably, for a roll, they look for some "strongish" flour.
If I were you, I would buy some bread flour, and some Manitoba flour, and start from bread flour only, and then increase manitoba flour in the recipe until you find the consistency you want.
I would determine water content by observing the dough during the kneading phase, and add up to the healthy right consistency. Basically, I would let the flour dictate the water content. 58% hydration is maybe "normalish-highish" water content, but we are certainly very far from ciabatta (Manitoba) territory.
Between All Purpose and Artisan Maker Plus, I would choose the one with the lesser protein content and hydrate it up to what the flour wants. If the resulting bread is not enough airy, I would increase the protein content (and, consequently, the flour will ask for more water).
I have no idea how those rolls are, but my memory from Germany suggest a very thin grain, small air bubbles, that would not suggest to me high hydration (i.e. would not suggest high protein content).
More extensible and takes less water sounds like spelt (dinkel) flour. More gliadin, less glutenin. Just spitballing here but you might try buying some refined (white) spelt flour and see how it behaves in your recipe.