Hydration & bread dough

GadgetGuy

GadgetGuy

(Formerly Shermie)
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I have a Nutrimill Artiste mixer & a Globe sp08 mixer. The Nutrimill Artiste can handle up to 10lbs of dough, while the Globe handles up to 4lbs of dough. Hydration is supposed to be a big thing when it comes to making dough. What is the science of it? Also, what is the determination of dough in pounds? Does it mean that a cup of flour equals a pound? Some people also used a baker's scale for measuring the ingredients. A baker's scale for the food service industry is too big & too expensive & it would occupy a considerable amount of kitchen real estate on the countertop or table!! Can one safely use a small scale to measure ingredients? 🤔
 
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If your kitchen scale can't handle ten pounds, just measure 5 pounds twice.

A lot of bakers, even in the US, use grams these days.

CD
 
caseydog said:
If your kitchen scale can't handle ten pounds, just measure 5 pounds twice.

A lot of bakers, even in the US, use grams these days.

CD
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This would be my very first time measuring ingredients for dough by scale. In the past, I've always measured ingredients for dough by using a measuring cup, except for the yeast. It already comes pre-measured. :whistling:
 
GadgetGuy said:
This would be my very first time measuring ingredients for dough by scale. In the past, I've always measured ingredients for dough by using a measuring cup, except for the yeast. It already comes pre-measured. :whistling:
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I make dough pretty often in my kitchenaid mixer (yeah, I know you don't like those, LOL) and before that I did it by hand. I don't weigh ingredients, I use a measuring cup. I follow a recipe. I do know that the amount of humidity in the air can vary from season to season and even from day to day but my bread dough always turns out really good. After the first rise when I punch out the dough by hand, I can tell if it needs more flour and how much just by the feel of the dough and yeah, that can vary by a good amount. I have never had the issue of it not being moist enough.

I think that TastyReuben makes way more bread than I do and has been doing it for much longer. I don't know if he weighs his flour or not, but I don't think so? I do know that a lot of bakers do that, but I don't own a kitchen scale and really don't think I need one. But I am always baking on small "scale" (no pun intended so I can't even imagine using 10 pounds of dough at one time, much less even 5!
 
Hydration is basically the percentage of liquid as it relates to the weight of the flour and most doughs are in the 60% and up. Hydration is complicated but I have tinkered with the liquid hydration percentages on occasion, but generally I just use existing recipes, so hydration is a mute point for me considering I'm not a baker and I'm not making up my own formulated recipes and like I said, just using existing recipes. A cup of flour weights about 250 grams.

I use the metric system for baking and I always weight everything. A decent electric home scale will do the job. You will get more consistent results which allows for more accurate adjustments and why measurements in metric and scales are used primarily in baking. cheers.
 
I do weigh my ingredients for baking, as much for the ease as for the precision. I have a standard digital scale, and while it can vary from maker and type, I follow the rule of thumb that a cup of flour equals 4-1/4 ounces.

Hydration levels in dough - that’s a very big deal in pizza making, and generates a lot of discussions over on the pizza forums. I’ve read through them enough to follow along, but I’ve never been that curious to get elbow deep in it, since I don’t have to churn out hundreds of pizzas a day that have to follow a certain degree of consistency.

Here’s a link to some articles/instructions on using bakers’ percentages (as opposed to volume measurements), which should also give you an introduction into dough hydration, since the two go hand-in-hand:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=62093.0
 
TastyReuben said:
I do weigh my ingredients for baking, as much for the ease as for the precision. I have a standard digital scale, and while it can vary from maker and type, I follow the rule of thumb that a cup of flour equals 4-1/4 ounces.

Hydration levels in dough - that’s a very big deal in pizza making, and generates a lot of discussions over on the pizza forums. I’ve read through them enough to follow along, but I’ve never been that curious to get elbow deep in it, since I don’t have to churn out hundreds of pizzas a day that have to follow a certain degree of consistency.

Here’s a link to some articles/instructions on using bakers’ percentages (as opposed to volume measurements), which should also give you an introduction into dough hydration, since the two go hand-in-hand:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=62093.0
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TR do you make your own pizza dough using bakers percentages or do you just follow a recipe? Lately I've been using 60% hydration for pizza dough using 00.
 
garlichead said:
TR do you make your own pizza dough using bakers percentages or do you just follow a recipe? Lately I've been using 60% hydration for pizza dough using 00.
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I have followed bakers’ percentages in the past, just for fun (is that weird?), but since I don’t really need to scale up or down, I mainly just follow the recipes that I’ve used and settled on over time.

I have recipes for probably 10 styles of pizza dough, and that’s what I almost always use, one of those, with varying hydration levels (Detroit-style pizza dough is very wet, for example).
 
TastyReuben said:
I have followed bakers’ percentages in the past, just for fun (is that weird?), but since I don’t really need to scale up or down, I mainly just follow the recipes that I’ve used and settled on over time.

I have recipes for probably 10 styles of pizza dough, and that’s what I almost always use, one of those, with varying hydration levels (Detroit-style pizza dough is very wet, for example).
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Yeah, I'm generally making a Neapolitan type dough and generally using my oven so the hydration is a little higher than say for a wood fired pizza oven using 00 where you want as little moisture as possible, in the mid 50's when your only cooking pizza for a few minutes. Interesting the Detroit style pizza dough would be fairly high in hydration which is suitable for longer cooking times in home ovens. cheers.
 
garlichead said:
Yeah, I'm generally making a Neapolitan type dough and generally using my oven so the hydration is a little higher than say for a wood fired pizza oven using 00 where you want as little moisture as possible, in the mid 50's when your only cooking pizza for a few minutes. Interesting the Detroit style pizza dough would be fairly high in hydration which is suitable for longer cooking times in home ovens. cheers.
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I knew there would be some experts "weighing" in here! :laugh:
 
TastyReuben said:
I do weigh my ingredients for baking, as much for the ease as for the precision. I have a standard digital scale, and while it can vary from maker and type, I follow the rule of thumb that a cup of flour equals 4-1/4 ounces.

Hydration levels in dough - that’s a very big deal in pizza making, and generates a lot of discussions over on the pizza forums. I’ve read through them enough to follow along, but I’ve never been that curious to get elbow deep in it, since I don’t have to churn out hundreds of pizzas a day that have to follow a certain degree of consistency.

Here’s a link to some articles/instructions on using bakers’ percentages (as opposed to volume measurements), which should also give you an introduction into dough hydration, since the two go hand-in-hand:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=62093.0
Click to expand...

I'm already a member there. Stuff seems more complicated or confusing there. :yuck:
 
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