I’ve noticed that whenever I use King Arthur bread flour, I always wind up adding a splash or two of milk or water beyond what the recipe calls for (everything by weight) to get the proper dough consistency, i.e., sticky (the recipe I’m working on now is John Kirkwood’s sourdough dinner rolls, and he says it’s about 78% hydration).
Since I’m weighing all the ingredients, and using a standard bread flour like KAF, why is this happening? With the ingredients he required, I mixed and still had dry flour in the bottom of the bowl. I added a generous splash of milk and it all came together.
I’ve repeatedly had the same problem with Reinhart’s bread formulas and others.
I’m in Memphis, a not notably dry climate, so I’m wondering what’s going on. As far as I know, my scale is accurate.
Is this a known peculiarity with KAF? The milk I added has (obviously) thrown off the hydration formula from the carefully weighed proportions, but my dough looked nothing like Kirkwood’s till I added the extra milk.
KA bread flour is a high protein flour (12.7%) compared to some other brands, so that's probably why. I use KA all-purpose for most of my breads, and that's already pretty high protein (11.7%). Give KA all-purpose a try instead of the bread flour.
Have you thought about using a turboencabulater?