Sticky Bread Dough

Use less water?

A sticky dough usually will result in a "lighter" bread. Key here is to keep your hands WELL floured while handling the dough. Adding more flour, as you know will just make it heavier.

Keep a bench scraper handy and lots of flour for your hands.

Take a step back and take a look at your recipes.

If you don't have a scale, get one, then make sure you understand bakers percentages. You may be working with something you think is reasonable, but is actually very much different from what you think it is. One of the secrets of cookbooks is that a lot of the recipes are not tested and a lot of the others blithely assume that a cup of flour is 3.5, 4, 4.5 or 5 ounces. Weigh a cup of flour as you normally measure it and then figure out what your hydration is.

Here are my rules of thumb for stickiness and hydration. Others may disagree. That's what makes horseraces and stock markets.

Lean doughs below 62.5% tend to be not sticky. From 62.5% to 67.5%, they can be sticky, depending on the length of time spent kneading, rising, in the fridge, etc. Above 67.5% (70%), they will be sticky, and should be handled with scraper knives, floured hands, etc. Anything above 75% will be very difficult to handle and will likely require a lot of thought as to how to get it to handle properly, shape up well and rise.

Enriched doughs, those with appreciable amounts of oil, butter, orange flower water, eggs, added sugar, etc., will be sticky just because the oil and butter are sticky and coat the flour, which inhibits the flour's ability to absorb the water.

That said, my experience is that enriched doughs aren't as nastily tenacious as high hydration lean doughs. There is just something about the enriched doughs, call it increased surface tension, although that's not the correct term, that makes them sticky but easy to handle. To check this, mix a lean dough at 75% and an enriched dough at 75%. They will both be sticky, but the enriched dough will be easier to handle.

I have found sourdough/natural levains to be the worst to handle for a given hydration. There is just something about them, at least in my kitchen, that makes them terrors to work with compared with lean yeasted doughs.

If you have a high hydration lean dough, you can flour the work surface, flour the scraper knife and flour your hands, then work quickly. You can also chill the dough a bit. You can also let it ferment overnight, which seems to reduce the apparent hydration.

Barry

snipped-for-privacy@msn.com (Marta) wrote in message news:...

Be sure to estimate the proper amount of water. Roughly if a cup of plain flour weighs 125 grams then at

60%absorption that will be 75 grams water or approximately 1/3 cup.Some flour like whole wheat and bread flour can absorb more about 1/2 to 1 tablespoon more and some will need only slightly more than quarter cup of water. Some plain flour will absorb less about 55% that will be slightly less than 1/3 cup of water. Do not fall into the habit of pouring more flour without considering the amount of liguids used. Usually bread dough contains slightly more than half its weight of water.Or one kilogram plain flour will need 500 to 600 grams water. If you use eggs and milk calculate that as part of liquid and reduce the water you add to the dough.The total liquid will never be higher than 60 %( or 600 grams in most cases).If you add fat or shortening especially in considerable amounts that can also affect dough absorption.You can reduce the water slightly also. If you are making a dough that contains sugar,dissolve it in water.It is preferable to dissolve the salt( specially the coarser ones) as well.When all the solutes are dissolved you add the flour to the solution and begin mixing it by hand and if shortening is needed, add the fat preferably in small amounts gradually (while kneading)in order to lubricate your hands during the kneading process and hence the dough will feel less sticky than usual.] Do not add all the fat in one whole bulk as that will coat the flour particles and hinder the proper absorption of the liquid. Have the liquids well absorbed by the flour before you think about putting in shortening gradually. And continue kneading until the dough will feel smooth and can be pulled out in one piece from the kneading board.

Good luck! Roy

Why estimate! Why not weigh?

Roughly if a cup of plain flour weighs 125 grams then at

True, but the difference won't account for what the poster is trying to do.

I think Roy has made some great posts over the past few months, but this isn't one of them.. In fact, this is bullshit.

Roy, the order of operations doesn't make any difference in home baking. If you are making TNT or lead styphnate, yes -- but bread, no.

Are you going to tell me that if I add oil before or after the water it will change how things work out? If you believe this, then you believe that A times B is different from B times A. Wanna buy a bridge? Do you love the tooth fairy? Sorry, it isn't so. If I have oil and water and flour in the same bowl, the flour will be coated with the oil and things will go on from there. You may know baking, but I know industrial processes and chemistry, and there is no way that you can separate out the effects of these things -- if you put oil and flour and water together, the oil will inhibit the flour's ability to absorb water, I don't care when in the process the oil and water are added.

Barry

I wouldn't have believed it either until I tried it, but yes. Fat/oil inhibits water uptake, which effects gluten development, so the order that oil is added into bread will effect the outcome. This becomes more pronounced in richer doughs, like brioche. In fact I learned about it from Corriher's brioche recipes in "Cookwise".

She specifies two different types of brioches. In one the butter is added with all other ingredients, in another the butter is held back, the dough is kneaded, then the butter is added in at the end of the mix. The first technique yields a tighter, more cakelike loaf. The second yields one that is more open textured.

Are you expecting this guy to have a set of scales at home? I am trying to simplify things here.You have problem with that?

Flours have different absorption performance and you have to be sometimes specific about that.

Practicing care in doing something is not bad Barry.

Well that is your opinion.And I had to respect that...

I do not know what is bothering you.You have made my post reply a personal one.

That what is your perception from an industrial point.But have you ever tried telling with care to the people who have this peculiar problem and tell them to just dump in things indiscriminately? Although this is off topic.... So You know how to make military explosives then why settle for the nearly obsolete items ? Do you think you will dump the hexamine without taking care about the rate of addition,if the temperature,rate of incorporation and concentration of the nitric acid is at the specified level ,ratio etc.in order to make RDX ? Or even synthesizing HMX and RDX by the Bachnmann method using ammonium nitrate and acetic anhydride( in addition to the nitric acid). Or with Pentaerythritol to the acid to get PETN.It is practically the same with other newer high explosives like TNAZ,HNIW,NTO that follows the same logic about exercising care during multi step reaction in the complicated explosives synthesis procedures.It follows the same thing during purification of the required material. There are steps that should be followed in making these very dangerous materials and it follows the same in benign articles in baking, in particular to cases where folks have difficulty in doing it the direct way.

I have told the same thing to a housewives and anybody who has started bread baking as a hobby and they were thankful about it as it made things clear to them that previously they just dump their flour into the water thinking if that was the best thing to do.They disregard other factors.It is even recommended by any technical baking people in telling baking hobbyist to be careful in the incorporation of liquids.Add the fat later if possible. You may know baking, but I know industrial processes and chemistry,

If you really have sufficient chemistry background you should understand this things then.And apply the principle in such simple process as making a bread dough. Well Barry you still have much to learn ,as you cannot differentiate between oil(or fat) and water And how one will affect the absorption. Delaying the fat will allow the flour to absorb the water better.You are not using surfactants here.Besides ,You are not adding enormous amount of fat to the dough anyway but significant enough in that can impede the smooth operation in such an elementary process a manual method of dough kneading.

Roy

Good advice. I don't recall where I read about that concept, but when I did, it was one of those "Duh...that's obvious" moments. The book said to keep flour in a container that leaves a few inches of room at the top. Before using, it said to gently invert the container a few times to "fluff" the flour. The resulting "1 cup" or whatever will be lighter than the same measuring cup of UNfluffed flour.

The only problem with having this knowledge is there's no way to know if a recipe was written around this method or not, unless the book specifically says "sift" or "fluff" or whatever.

snipped-for-privacy@msn.com (Marta) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

Rather than trying to knead this stuff, simply fold 1/3rd away, 2/3rd towards, 1/2 to the left, and 1/2 to the right, turn over gnetly dpread out to previous size retaining the bubbles for an open texture, and do the same. Repeat each time the dough doubles in size, or every hour or two.