Ground seeds and flour weight..

Toast
bread1965 on 28 Aug 2016 at 07:54

Hi Everyone..

I've searched for this question on the site. I'm sure it's been asked before, but I'm not able to find it..

Can someone confirm to me if I'm right that I should consider ground seeds (like flax) part of the total flour weight when trying to calculate hydration? I grind them up finely, add them the flour, mix well, then add water for autolyse. I'm only adding 10% - so say 900g flours and100g well ground flax.

As always, many thanks! Bake happy - bread1965

However, if they're dry enough to absorb some of the water, that will affect the effective hydration % of the dough. For example, if you use 600 gm of water with the seeds absorbing 100, the effective hydration will be (600 - 100) / 900, not 600 / 900. 

The seeds must absorb some, so I guess it's about knowing what range of hydration you want.. I think I'll err on the side of caution and include them.. I'll see how it works.. Thank you for taking the time to reply! Bake happy - bread1965

ground so I do include it in flour weight when figuring the overall hydration percent I want for the mix.  Same with other seeds that absorb water.  Chia can absorb10 times their weight in water so I soak them separately - all seeds are a bit different in this regard so some experimentation is in order.

We love seeds in bread too.

So many questions.. so little time.. thank you! Back from travels, I'm back in the kitchen on weekends. I made some tartine olive herb/lemmon bread this afternoon, so I'll be digging into that pretty soon.. I have to work on shaping my batards (so more questions there as the skin kept tearing when shaping). I went back to the swiss raisin meusli bread yesterday too, still not right, so many more questions there also.. but all good.. bread is shaping me as much as I shape bread.. bake happy, thank you again.. bread1965!

So many questions.. so little time.. thank you! Back from travels, I'm back in the kitchen on weekends. I made some tartine olive herb/lemon bread this afternoon, so I'll be digging into that pretty soon.. I have to work on shaping my batards (so more questions there as the skin kept tearing when shaping). I went back to the swiss raisin meusli bread yesterday too, still not right, so many more questions there also.. but all good.. bread is shaping me as much as I shape bread.. bake happy, thank you again.. bread1965!

and will combine with and influence the other flours in the matrix.   Count them into the flour.  If you want to be precise about the hydrations, figure the hydration for each flour and add them together.  Take 100g fine flax flour and add the same % of liquid as the dough and let it hydrate 1/4 to 1/2 an hour and then check the consistency.  If similar to the desired dough then simple calculate flax and wheat together to figure hydration.  

If the hydrated (soaked) flax is stiffer than the desired dough, slowly add more water until it.  Let the flax flour soak up the water.  When it resembles the final dough "feel,"  weigh, subtracting the 100g of flax to get the water weight.  (Divide the water weight by the flax weight and multiply by 100 to get the % hydration.) 

One thing to consider is the amount of oil that is set free by grinding flax into flour.  If the recipe includes fats, one might have to recalculate the fat in the recipe.