Hi Jess,

I noticed that too and King Arthur's response only accentuates how flawed the 75% hydration guidance really is. I went back and calculated the actual hydration rate for both the KA Sandwich Bread recipe included in this post and the KA Soft Cinnamon Rolls. After accounting for the hydration in milk and butter, the hydration rate of the KA Sandwich Bread recipe using the TZ method is only 66%. After accounting for the hydration in milk, butter, and eggs, the hydration rate of the KA Soft Cinnamon Rolls recipe is 70%. This guidance is inherently flawed, and I think that's why so many people are complaining about their dough being way too sticky after converting it up to 75% hydration. That's way too much hydration.

I am very interested in incorporating TZ into other recipes. The reason why we need to add more liquid to non-TZ recipes when using the TZ method is because some of the liquid that would ordinarily get absorbed by the dough gets trapped/lost when making the slurry. However, not all of the liquid used in the slurry is trapped/lost (if it were, we would just increase the amount of liquid in the recipe by the amount of liquid used in the slurry). I think we should really be calculating the amount of liquid that was "lost" when making the slurry and then add it to the dough along with the remaining amount of liquid the original recipe calls for (after subtracting the amount used in the slurry). The goal should be to maintain the SAME hydration proportions as the original recipe after taking compensatory measures for the amount of liquid that was lost to the slurry. Using the KA Sandwich Bread recipe, I calculated that 39% of the liquid used to make the slurry was lost, so you would need to add this amount (.39 x 113g = 44g) to the dough along with the remaining amount of liquid called for in the recipe (114g).

KA Sandwich Bread Original Recipe
1 cup (227g) milk
2 tablespoons (28g) butter
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons (25g) sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 cups (361g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

KA Sandwich Bread Converted Recipe
slurry: 113g milk + 23g flour
dough:
2 tablespoons (28g) butter
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons (25g) sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
338g AP flour
114g milk + the "lost milk" (.39x113g = 44g) = 158g

I took a non-TZ cinnamon roll recipe and converted it into a TZ cinnamon roll recipe by adding into the dough 39% of the liquid lost when making the slurry. Sure enough, the amounts in the converted recipe were nearly identical to those found in the SA Soft Cinnamon Rolls recipe.

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