January 14, 2024 - 6:28am
Baker's math for hydration & salt with varying starter
When a dough is said to have 70% hydration is it out of the dry flour or taking the flour in the starter into account as well? So if I have a recipe with 500g flour, 200g starter (at 100% hydration), and 350g water, is it a 70% hydration dough (350/500) or 75% ((350 + 100) / (500 + 100)) ?
The reason I ask is that I think I normally see the first approach, but I change my starter contents depending on the season and how much time I have, so it doesn't make sense that the water remains fixed.
And similarly, about salt. I see the recommendation is 2%. Is it out of the dry flour, total flour or total weight (incl. water)?
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It's a good question and I don't know that there is much consistency about it. That's because the baker's percentage of liquid serves one purpose and the overall hydration serves another.
Using the baker's percentage based on the dry flour makes it easy to understand a recipe and to scale it or change it.
The overall hydration level helps with understanding what dough properties can be expected.
If the two numbers are not much different and the difference is consistent, then it won't matter much. If the difference is larger or you make a range of doughs that are rather different from each other, then the difference between the two hydration calculations will matter more.
As far as I know, salt amount is calculated as a baker's percentage of the dry flour weight. But it would make sense to me to use the total weight of flour instead.
Would include starter. If you use a small amount of starter or use a small amount of starter to build a larger levain then don't sweat it. But it would be correct to take into account total flour + total water when the whole recipe is broken down into flour + water + salt.
In both cases, it is the total amount of flour, including anything in your preferential and the flour you add later. You also need to consider that water that goes into your preferments to get the hydration correct.
Karl Heinz
at room temperature is considered part of your total hydration. According to Mr. Jeffrey Hamelman.
I’ve seen it both ways, also. I keep my starter at 100% and that won’t change the hydration ratio based on different amounts of starter. Regarding salt, the difference is rather small, it seems to me. Maybe I’m a hack but not worrying that detail works for me.
That being said, I always account for the flour and water in the levien. That is my MO. Following to read what others think. The part that confuses me is the effect of soakers on hydration. As in whole ungrounded rolled oats for an example. I am really not sure how all the water absorbed into the "porridge" effects hydration if at all.
Kind regards,
Will Falzon.
How does it feel? That's the true answer. Enjoy!
I can't see any reason not to include the levain flour and water in the overall hydration - you're just doing half a job otherwise.
And yes, salt percentage should also take into account the flour in the levain, otherwise your bread will be undersalted.
I think Chad Robertson famously had a slap-dash approach to hydration calculation in his books, so maybe he started a bad trend....
Lance