I am new to sourdough but have succesfully got my starter going, my first loaf was OK but i think i left it too long and it overproved and the proving basket was a bit small. I keep reading about different percentage hydration but do not know what this means. Can someone please explain?
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Hello Lincoln imp,
Hydration is just a way of indicating how wet or dry a mixture of flour and liquid (water) is.
It is just the ratio weight of liquid to weight of flour expressed as a percentage. So if you had 100grams of flour and 100 grams of water, that would be a ratio of one water to one flour and the hydration would be reported as 100%. This is a value that many people use for their starter and the mix has the consistency of a thick batter.
For dough, a fairly common hydration that produces a dough that is fairly easily handled (for strong white wheat flour) is 70%. That means that for 500g of flour, there is 350g of water in the mix. This is easy of you are using bakers yeast but with sourdough you have to make some allowance for the water and flour that is in the levain/starter. It is easy enough to calculate by hand or there are some spreadsheets available. http://sourdough.com/blog/hydration-calculating-spreadsheet
Another 'rule', if you are using a 100% hydration levain, is the 1:2:3 recipe which is just 1 part levain, 2 parts water and 3 parts flour. In this case you dough would consist of (say) 150g levain, 300g water and 450g flour.
At the same hydration, different flours will give a different dough consistency because of different gluten contents and different water absorbing characteristics. So rye flour is worked at different hydration to wheat flour and wholemeal wheat at different to white wheat. Even the same brand of flour can vary a little between batches. For this reason it is necessary to be a bit flexible with the recipe and you should be prepared to adjust the amounts based on your experience.
Because flour takes some time to absorb and react to moisture, it is often recommended to hold back some of the water until the dough character has been assessed and then add the balance/more if necessary. This is because it is much easier to add too much flour trying to correct a too wet dough (because of the time absorbancy factor) that the other way around (assuming that you add the water in small increments of course). You can also end up with a weaker dough because of the uneven gluten development between the different flour additions.
Hope this helps and good luck with your projects.
Farinam
Hi Farinam.
Thank you for your explanation, as I said on my first attempt I think I had the dough a bit too wet and it also over proved and collapsed over the basket. I baked it any way, although it did not look that pretty it tasted like sourdough.
Trying another one tomorrow in time for Christmas Day!