High Hydration
I started baking bread because
- I love eating good bread (or even mediocre bread with good stuff on top)
- I need to avoid white flour for health reasons (see above for loving eating)
- The local artisan bakeries each offered one multigrain bread, and a rye bread maybe once a week; the bakery breads did not have the nice additions that they put into their white breads, like onions, olives, cheese, etc.
- The bakery whole grain breads I'm sure met the legal requirements for naming but probably were no higher in whole grains than they needed to be
I started out with simpler (mostly white with a little whole grain) breads. When those were edible, I moved on to higher whole grain % bread. That meant high hydration (Hamelman says anything above 70% hydration requires more careful handling; these breads were often in the 75-80% hydration range, and sometimes higher).
It took a long time, but now I can make Hamelman's 100% whole wheat pretty well 100% whole wheat "workday" bread formula [1]. And I've had some good results with formulas from "The Rye Baker" https://theryebaker.com/ [2] and the book of the same title).
So today, I tried Hamelman's Black Bread Formula [3], a 60% medium rye at 68% hydration, with an old bread and coffee soaker. The dough came together easily and was easy to handle through pre-shaping, shaping, proofing (came right out of the bannetons, no sticking), and scoring. Black Bread Photos [4]
I first thought, "Hey, I'm finally getting good at this". And then reality set in. The formula has 68% hydration, under the "high hydration" limit. It was just much easier to handle than the 80-85% hydration breads I have been making.
Maybe I'll get the hang of high hydration doughs before I'm too old to be allowed near an oven.