Re: How to control hydration?

"Samartha Deva" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Robert Marshall wrote:

> > Well, first off, you have to freeze dry the flour. 

> No, you don't, unless you need to be compulsivly anal 
> about stuff. 

So who is it you iss accusing of being compulsively anal?

Well, you know, like I said before, you can just weigh your
flour to start.  So you got a 100-lb. sack of it and it weighs
105 pounds.  Then the incremental moisture is 5%.  (Of course
you need to tare on an identical empty sack.)  That is a much 
easier way.  Of course, you could do it with a 5-lb. sack of
flour, but then you would need to do a calculation.

For the rest, you can use the Samartha.net calculators.  Then,
when you are finished, you just need to adjust all of the flour
values down and the water values up by the per cent 
incremental moisture.  Technically you'd need to do it too
for the sunflower seeds and all the other stuff.

Somebody proposed that all you really need to do is to weigh
the water so everything will come right.  That's even easier,
I guess.

What I do is keep track of the water and weigh the final 
dough.  From that I calculate the "hydration".  In the soggy 
summertime,  it seems that the calculated value can be 10% 
low, even slightly more. That's a judgement call based on my 
assessment of the dough plasticity and the holeyness of the 
bread.  But what do I know?

---
DickA