Are Kithen aid mixer recipes more wet in general?

Toast
Sugarowl on 18 Aug 2016 at 12:28
Hi all, I was looking at my kitchen aid recipe book and the water content is 83%? I think I did the math right, but are mixer recipes just wetter in general? I recently used my mixer to make the Cafeteria Lady rolls and it was a very wet dough, I only had to add a few tablespoons of flour to get it to pull away from the bowl. The rolls came out very well. It was maybe a brioche dough?(http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13907/southern-style-yeast-rolls). The kitchen aid book: 1/2 cup milk 3 T sugar 2 tsp salt 3T butter 1.5 cups warm water 5-6 cups of all purpose flour 2 packages of instant yeast (one package is about 1/4 oz I think) The recipe seems a bit off to me, but hey, I 'm new at this. I haven't tried it yet. I've just been playing around with another recipe, adding more sugar, less sugar, more fat, etc etc. I'm discovering bread to be fun to experiment with! :) I brioche dough, can I do a partial substitute of oil in place of all that butter? I will be using Lactaid milk next time (lactose-free milk brand) as my son had a not so pleasant time after eating it. He is lactose intolerant and that was just too much regular milk in it (his tush looked like a tomato, poor guy).

Mixers are good for most types of dough, and can be very helpful with high hydration ones that are hard to deal with by hand. After learning stretch and fold techniques, I rarely use the mixer for anything but doughs that require a crumb with less holes, i.e., tighter. In your rolls recipe, the milk will promote a softer crumb, and you could sub shortening, but lose flavor. You did the right thing to add a bit more flour to achieve a good result. Flour does different things according to weather, etc., so you'll get the hang of how the dough should look and feel as you bake more. I can't tell you how uneven results were for me at first, and I know others had the same frustrations, to have baked a masterpiece one day and a loaf fit for bird food the next I tried baking. For such simple ingredients, it's incredible how complex things get once the ingredients are mixed. 

Yes! Everything is different depending on the weather and humidity. I know that what I figure out now will probably be useless when our winter (fall to those of you who get snow) finally comes. I've had two cakes not work right because it decided to rain the day I needed to decorate and the humidity messed up my icing! I thought I had started to figure out bread a little bit, but loaf number 6 was as dense as number 1. At least the dough is fun to play with. Figuring out the mixer will come in handy when my hand starts to hurt in the few weeks we get cold weather. At least we have a local bread bakery, I just can't afford to sample everything at once, have to space it out over a few years. Ha ha :) If the Stretch and Fold technique is from that sourdough guy's site, then I've seen it. It's how I found this website in the first place! It's pretty crazy how easy it looks, it is on my to-do list. :)
Profile picture for user myra byanka

myra byanka on 19 Aug 2016 at 06:56

Have you thought about investing in a kitchen scale to weigh your flour, etc.?  Cuts down on inconsistencies. 

Profile picture for user Breadandwine

Breadandwine on 18 Aug 2016 at 16:23

Hi SugarOwl

Hand mixed or machine mixed dough shouldn't be any different. It's all down to the flour/water ratio of your recipe, whatever method you're using.

Using cup measurements it's difficult to tell what hydration your recipe was. As a general rule a 3:1 flour to water ratio (3 cups flour to one cup water) will give you a hydration of around 62-3% - which equates to the 1lb flour to 10oz water measurements we used to use in the bakery I worked in (a long time ago!).

High hydration starts at around 70% - 100g flour to 70g of liquid. As you can see, it's much easier to do the maths when using grams.

I'm a vegan, so my bread, which aways tastes pretty good, uses no milk, butter or eggs. And I also question the need for sugar - unless you're making a sweet dough, of course.

Check out my 3 ways of making a basic loaf:

http://nobreadisanisland.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-basic-loaf-of-bread-3-different.html

HTH! B&W

A cup of all-purpose flour here is about 145grams. It's probably closer to 150g for me since my scale goes from 100g to 150g, no numbers in between so I guesstimate when I need to weigh. Thanks for the "3:1" rule. That helps. I haven't done the recipe yet, I've been playing with a recipe by apers which is 4 cups of flour and 1 cup of liquid (I use 1.25cups since I'm using a bit of whole wheat). Some day I'll get a digital scale. So that's about 580g of flour to 235ml of water. I'm using sugar (2 tablespoons) because I heard it gives a bit of a crust, but I've been using honey with the whole wheat because it gives a nice flavor. I don't bake bread with eggs since my little guy likes to knead and eat. I saw your site and it was interesting the different ways you do it. I would like to do eventually do an overnight rise, but bread rises pretty fast here in Florida since it's summer (even in the fridge). I'll double my recipe (except for the yeast part) and see if that slows it down a bit. I think my next loaf will have just water and olive oil in it (no milk or butter) to compare it with the previous ones. I do like olive oil and have used it in bread before. Since you don't use milk, what do you use to make it a soft sandwich bread? I'm not a fan of coconut, so not sure what else to use. (I do use an autolyse for the whole wheat part ~145g of the flour)

. "So that's about 580g of flour to 235ml of water."    

That's 40 to 41% hydration...  way too dry a dough to work with.  

With 1.25 cups water it nears 50% hydration.  Rather low considering a substitution of whole wheat.  Sugars act like liquids, but still looks needy.  :)

 

That could be why my bread is always dense. I'm not a fan, but the husband likes it dense. Thanks for letting me know you count sugar as liquid in bread, I wasn't sure if that was 'across the board' or only in some things. I'll use less flour then like in Lesson One (3 cups of flour for one cup of water). I did find the autolyse of the whole wheat flour made my bread soft, so I think I'll still do that if I put whole wheat in again. My brain has been a bit sleep deprived lately. I'll be more awake when the kiddo's last molar finally finishes coming in.

but it acts like one when it melts.  Autolysing is great, Do it all the time and it saves me lots of work.  You can set a timer but one tends to sort of remember even when walking around in a haze.  Dough can also be so forgiving.  The stir and forget for a while method.  Used it for years!  :) 

I am not exactly sure how you arrived at 83%.  I mean if you are talking about this particular recipe.  By my math it is in 58-70% range, which results in a pretty mundane 64% average.

just makes your life that much more difficult. I convert all recipes to weight and use my scale to precisely weigh the flour and water which result is expertly consistent results. Flour can weigh dramatically different amounts in one cup, depending on how it was packed, and how long it has sat on a shelf. I found that one cup can weigh 25% more if it sits on my cupboard for a while compared to when I first opened the package. Flour is highly compressible and thats why recipes often fail. Of course some people sift their flour diligently which does seem to help but I found that simply doing all my baking with weight based recipes has given me the consistency and repeatability that I need to create great results for my family to eat.

my flour before lightly scooping. I've started a list of how much a cup weighs in my cookbook. I think I will be weighing for bread now, I haven't had to do it for cakes or cookies (unless I'm subbing gluten free flour). But I did use my scale today and a cup (of all-purpose flour) for me is 5oz. I'm not sure what that is in grams as the grams part was not numbered there. I am putting a digital scale on my "to buy" list.
for your help! I do appreciate it very much. I made bread today that came out very good! I weighed my flour and got over my fear of the dough being too wet, in fact I added a little bit more. I used 15oz of all-purpose flour with 1.25 cups of water. I did try to add some seasoning, but I think 2 teaspoons was a little much. Still good though! Next time it will be a double batch with same amount of yeast to try the slow rise thing. :)

using a weight converter  and the 1.25 cups of water is almost 300g  at 296g  

Calculating hydration comes out to 70%     

The 5 oz comes out to  142g  

Seasoning?

Way too much for my taste, but it's still edible! Would be probably make good dinner rolls, but for sandwiches it was a little overpowering, even my little guy didn't like it and bread is almost always what he wants (besides bananas).