There is a trick to adding the water to the dough, and it’s a secret that many bakers don’t seem to talk about. It’s called bassinage. It really is the key to getting higher hydration in bread.
There is a very specific way of adding water into sourdough. Rather than simply slooshing all the water in at once, I recommend that you add roughly 70%, and set aside the rest. Mix the dough, which will be quite tight, and begin to develop the gluten. When the gluten is developed and you have a good, strong dough, add the rest of the water incrementally – maybe 20 or 25g at a time. Mix it in and let the dough rest for a few minutes to take up the water, before adding the next batch of water.
While we’re talking about hydration, there is another important thing that can lead to problems… baker’s percentages. Understanding how baker’s percentages work is essential to being able to work from a formula rather than a recipe, or for scaling recipes up or down. The baker’s percentage expresses the quantity of each of the ingredients as a percentage of the total amount of flour used. So, flour will always be 100%, and when a formula is 84% hydration this means that for 1kg of flour, you would use 840g of water. Following this example, to make the dough you would initially add 700g of water to the flour and mix. The remaining 140g of water can then be added in small amounts, mixing and resting the dough after each addition.
Getting the hydration right will also affect the structure and crumb of your loaf. An under hydrated loaf, will not have the nice, open crumb many of us are looking for in a sourdough. This is because there just isn’t enough water to allow the gluten to stretch. Equally, if the dough is over hydrated, you are going to lose structure in the loaf because it’s too wet and the gluten is effectively weakened. Optimal hydration will depend on the recipe, and especially on the flour you are using. Some flours are able to absorb more water than others and need a higher hydration. Again, it really is a case of needing to have familiarity with your ingredients.
