Having been using yudane in a variety of sourdough applications for several years now, I heavily disagree with the overall findings here. One of the key benefits of hot water roux is that it contributes to much easier dough handling (albeit with slightly lower extensibility). Which is to say, you can increase the relative hydration of the dough much more easily without winding up with a sticky mess, because the gelatinized starches hold on to the water. Given the common quest to build higher-hydration sourdoughs, that's a huge plus for this particular area and it's a shame that it's been totally ignored here.

The author didn't mention how much roux was used, and that is a key factor; 15-20% or even more will definitely have a major impact. I suspect that for the results listed in this article, the percentages were kept very low in keeping with the general practices listed elsewhere on this site. The recipes on this site that use water roux fall on the very low end of the spectrum, usually with only a 6% contribution, but many Asian recipes found elsewhere go much, much higher. I feel that the author needs to do a lot more research before publishing these findings, and also take more of a scientific approach with regard to testing and publishing different percentages to assess overall impact.

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