Higher hydration bread techniques.

I've been a bit lax about updating this blog lately as there really haven't been any exciting new things that I thought worthy of sharing.

However, today I had a hankering for some Turkish Bread. Nice bread with an open crumb and huge air bubbles. I looked up some recipes and found that it's a bit more labour intensive than I really wanted to deal with this evening during making dinner, so here's the details of a high(er) hydration bread experiment.

High hydration doughs tend to make for those larger bubbles present in ciabatta and turkish bread. High hydration is increasing the water content to say 60% or 70% by weight compared to the flour weight in the recipe.

Generally, it's better to use a better quality bread flour rather than the low cost white flour from the supermarket. However, I didn't have any of the good stuff in stock so I have had to make do with regular white flour for the sake of this experiment.

Here's the ingredients and the technique:
500 gms flour
350 mls water
2 tablespoons of yeast
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil.

It's better, in this case, to put the sugar and yeast into solution in tepid water so that it can be added in two stages during the creation of the dough.

The salt should be added to the flour prior to adding the liquid. If you're doing it manually, sift it in. If you're using a machine and being lazy, let the dry ingredients be combined at low blade speed for a minute or two before you add the water. Experiment! It's lots of fun.

Turn out the very sticky and shiny dough to an oiled bowl and let it rise in the usual manner for about thirty minutes.

Then stretch it and fold it back over itself twice and let it rise again.

And again.

And again.

Yes - that's right - four risings.

Divide the dough into as many 'loaves' as you wish, decorate and slash to suit your taste. If you split the dough in two and draw the halves each gently into two sort of rectangular shapes then you're about right. Be gentle handling the dough to prepare the loaves. You've worked hard for bigger bubbles so don't burst them by being ham-fisted. Sprinkle some flour lightly onto the formed loaves and allow to rise for the last time for about one hour.

Baking time is around 35 to 40 minutes at 220C conventional. Fan forced is not really a good idea.

Spray cool water every five to ten minutes for the first twenty minutes for a slightly crispier crust.

The resulting crust texture is firm and crunchy with bubbles of around 5 mm. Lovely taste. Good mouthfeel. Excellent for sandwiches owing to the crunch of the crust and the gently tender 'meat' of the bread.

I'll make another batch with a slightly different technique in a few days' time and report back.


Enjoy!