William

November 4, 2021 at 6:58pm

In reply to by WDI (not verified)

This article is surprisingly confusing. I've read it several times now. My comprehension is usually pretty good, but maybe I'm just having a bad day.

Trying to understand the formula translation method here:

1000g flour
600g water

60% hydration.

5% of the formula's flour goes in the tangzhong, that's 50g of flour. Five times as much of the water as flour, by weight, is 250g of water.

After the tangzhong, what is left for my formula is:

950g flour
350g water

37% hydration

What now? Add 250g of water back in, bringing the hydration above 60%? Or add 220g of water back in to account for the new flour measurement of 950g and bring the hydration back to 60%? I'm struggling to understand relevance of the 75% hydration in this recipe. Are we simply increasing the hydration to 75% and then setting the difference in additional water aside to make the tangzhong and calculating how much flour to borrow from the formula based on how much additional water was added?

So,

1000g flour
600g water

+150g water for the tangzhong (15% of the total flour weight)
50g = 5% of the total flour, but then the water:flour ratio for the tangzhong is not meeting the 5x water by weight.

Struggling to make this make sense in a consistent formulaic way. Someone help!

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