It seems like meddling with the hydration is an obstacle created by using the recipe's liquid for making the tangzhong. If you took 5%-10% of the flour, and then just added 5x that mass for the tangzhong, but didn't remove that 5x number from the hydration called for in the recipe, wouldn't you be in a better position?

My takeaway from your test is not that 75% is a magical hydration number, but that reducing a 63% hydration dough even more by binding up its hydration into the slurry has negative effects on the rise. Am I misinterpreting the process?

• Reply