Brian H.

July 13, 2024 at 11:58am

I haven't found this recipe as forgiving as some. (This could be mostly a matter of skill level--I'm still pretty new at this.) The dough is SO wet, and SO slack, and no amount of extra folding or workbench flour seemed to help much; it just spread out into a gloppy mess.

At the end of Martin Philip's "Don't Be a Bread Hostage" blogpost, he gives a lower-hydration version--750g of water rather than 800. If I'm doing my baker's percentages correctly, this lowers the hydration by 5%. For me, that was a game-changer. It's still pretty wet and pretty slack, but not unmanageably so. Now that I can get decent-or-better results consistently, I'll work on bumping the water back up a little at a time.

Also, in another video, he uses this bread as his example, and mentions that the dough is folded 4 times. (The recipe calls for 3.) I usually go around the bowl twice on each of the 3 bowl folds, and I started a 4th bowl fold on my most recent batch but the dough was very tight (I grabbed a handful & lifted, but it didn't stretch, I just picked up the entire ball of dough) so I skipped the 4th fold.

Practice, practice, practice....

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