Hi again everyone, I am looking to pick your brains once again. I have been really struggling with high hydration doughs such as Ken Forkish recipes. I made the overnight country brown yesterday, it tastes great and has some of the most open crumb I have seen on such a brown loaf, but.... the doughs are incredibly slack and spread far too much rather than rising up. I know this is a skill that needs to be worked on, but I tried two other recipes yesterday (from my Williams-Sonoma wholewheat baking book) as well as the Ken Forkish, all the doughs were excessively wet when mixed and remained so. Thinking a lot about this problem last night, I realised that not only is my house very cold, it is also very humid. For example, I can no longer grind my salt, it has gone too slushy. It then occurred to me that if my salt is absorbing so much water, then it is likely that my flour, especially all the whole grains, which are kept in their paper bags are probably also absorbing a lot of water, could this be the reason that my doughs seem to be so consistently wet? How much of a difference can the humidity make to the amount of water needed to get the correct hydration? I know this is like asking 'how long is a piece of string', so to be clear I am not asking for a complicated calculation, but rather, could a very damp flour mean that I need to reduce hydration significantly, or are we talking about a minuscule difference that only a really skilled baker would notice?
In other words I suppose I am asking, is it just my lack of skill or could I be making things significantly harder for myself by carefully weighing everything so that I get what I believe is the correct hydration, but is in fact, because of the humidity, a much higher hydration than I thought?
I do run a dehumidifier as much as I can, but I am well aware that the house is damp. Would it be better to store my flours in airtight plastic tubs?
Thank you again for your help.
If this is your first time with the particular recipe(s), there could be various reasons for the inconsistencies. Could be environmental. Could be differences in flour type. Could be the skill of the baker, etc., etc.
Sometimes, regardless of the reason, more or less flour may be needed. That's why many(most?) recipes advise to adjust flour/liquid to achieve the desired consistency.
Really difficult to make a hard judgement on "why", sometimes, until the recipe is given several attempts.
My 2 cents. Good luck.
First time with two of the recipes, several times with the Ken Forkish one. It is always too slack, so why I haven't tried reducing the hydration yet I don't know!
of weighing ingredients, and rightly so, it is still just one of many factors that influence the outcome of a particular bake. We almost always have to adjust something, even after weighing things precisely.
Humidity, whether high or low, is one of those factors that we have to adjust for. I had an experience recently of baking a bread in one location out of one bag of flour, then baking the same bread the next day at another location from a different bag of flour. The results were amazingly different. The first dough was exactly as expected. The second dough was a gloppy mess that wound up requiring significantly more flour to achieve the correct consistency. Since the humidity from one day to the next wasn't wildly different, I attribute the variance to the two different bags of flour. The point is, even with exacting measurements, I still found it necessary to make adjustments on the fly.
Skill is another factor. Mr. Forkish is known for his insistence on pushing a formula to its limits, then backing off just enough to generate reliable results for him. His practices, in other hands, in other locations, in other climates, don't always produce the same result that he achieves. He has adapted to his locale and its conditions. Bakers who want to use his formulae will have to adapt them to their locale and conditions. In your case, faced with very high humidity, you may need to back off the water content to get the results you want. Recognizing the need to adjust and knowing how to adjust is one kind of skill. Good for you for recognizing and diagnosing your situation.
As to keeping your flours in moisture-proof containers, yes, that's a good idea. While you have no control over the moisture content in the flours at the time you buy them, you can mitigate the effects of extreme swings in the ambient humidity in your home. Sealed containers help to keep unwelcome guests at bay, too.
Paul
What you say makes sense. My problem is that I don't know what a 75% hydration dough should feel like as compared to an 80% or 65%. So I always try to weigh the ingredients spot on, to try and understand.
But, I am now thinking I need to start trusting my own judgement a little more. For example, today I made scones/biscuits and I knew, from many years experience, not to add the milk the recipe called for because I would end up with a batter.
My flour all comes from one company and I am consistently finding that I don't need the liquid called for in recipes when baking cakes and cookies, so it is beginning to seem logical to me that this may also be true of their bread flour. Although whether it is the flour itself or my humid house is something I cannot be certain of.
You are so right about the need to learn to adjust, I think I forget sometimes, becoming too wrapped up in the weigh everything accurately idea, that I need to learn to use my brain and trust my instinct!
I tried a few of the Forkish recipes, and was not happy with the results. I am not posting to give you any advice, just to agree with the observations here - most recipes say to add appropriate amounts of flour, and or water, until it feels right, but it not possible to know how it should feel when you have never made the recipe before, and a ciabatta dough and a bagel dough will feel totally different. Have you checked the Forkish video's on Youtube. I think there are one or two that show you how he expects the dough to look. I have a totally different approach, I use bakers percentages pretty religiously. If I make a recipe and i see the classic sign that it has too much water - an inverted dome when it comes out of the oven, I reduce the water a little the next time. I think Paul is suggesting that you can work from the other direction, reduce the water from the amount called for, try it and if it does not collapse, but you think it could have a little more rise, add a little more water the next time, and keep increasing water until you are happy with the outcome, if you get the inverted dome, you know it was too wet and you need to try a lower hydration.
Hi, thank you for your advice. I am going to try again over the next couple of days as the flavour is good, but I will try with reduced water. I have watched all the Forkish videos that I can find, I suppose nothing really compares with actually being with someone who knows what they are doing and being able to feel the dough. But there are recipes I have where I do get a good result, so I suppose I can compare the feel of the dough from those to give me a starting point.