My experience with St. Lucia buns is that they become hard very quickly - perfect candidates for tangzhong! KAF's recipe is the best I've come across, but I'm nervous making the changes to convert it. This article and the other related ones make the calculations easy, but my confidence is lagging. Looking only at the flour (539 g) and milk (227 g), it has a measly 42% hydration (can I really increase it to 75% without screwing it up??). When I take the time to calculate the water content of the milk, butter, and eggs, plus sum up the flour and potato flakes (can't find potato flour anywhereeeee), then the hydration level bumps up to 56%. That means I'm adding from 99 to 177 g of additional milk to the recipe to achieve 75% hydration (a huge difference). Since tomorrow is St Lucia Day, I don't have much time for experimentation. Did I mention the dry winter weather and wood stove drying out my home?? Ordinarily, I might adjust the flour/liquid slightly when kneading the dough to account for weather, but the 2 step method raises other questions, such as are there consequences to using too much/too little liquid in the tangzhong vs the remainder of the recipe? Help!
December 12, 2019 at 9:02pm
My experience with St. Lucia buns is that they become hard very quickly - perfect candidates for tangzhong! KAF's recipe is the best I've come across, but I'm nervous making the changes to convert it. This article and the other related ones make the calculations easy, but my confidence is lagging. Looking only at the flour (539 g) and milk (227 g), it has a measly 42% hydration (can I really increase it to 75% without screwing it up??). When I take the time to calculate the water content of the milk, butter, and eggs, plus sum up the flour and potato flakes (can't find potato flour anywhereeeee), then the hydration level bumps up to 56%. That means I'm adding from 99 to 177 g of additional milk to the recipe to achieve 75% hydration (a huge difference). Since tomorrow is St Lucia Day, I don't have much time for experimentation. Did I mention the dry winter weather and wood stove drying out my home?? Ordinarily, I might adjust the flour/liquid slightly when kneading the dough to account for weather, but the 2 step method raises other questions, such as are there consequences to using too much/too little liquid in the tangzhong vs the remainder of the recipe? Help!