Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
> Well my first experiment was a disaster (too many new/unknown factors)
> but the second was very promising. Kenneth, it looks like you were
> right about the dryness of my original dough. Thanks again to all for
> the great advice.
>
> I've got one follow-up question: how does the starter itself figure in
> to the hydration measurements? I'm using 400g of flour, so that's 300g
> or so of water -- does the starter count as part of the weight of the
> water, or do I make an estimate of how to split it between flour and
> water weights? Do the quantity and liquidity of the starter make much
> difference to how the dough behaves?
>
What really happens would require very precise measurements of time,
temperature, initial starter conditions and all that.
During fermentation, the organisms convert carbohydrates into CO2 which
escapes and water which makes your starter more hydrated as fermentation
goes on.
There is also a weight loss involved - the gas escaping.
Luckily, for a hobby baker, all these factors can be neglected. I
measure fermentation weight losses in the 2. stage of the Detmold
3-Stage process (24 hours) in the area of 1.2, 1.5 %.
With that ignored and your question if starter hydration makes a
difference? It sure does.
Does it matter in your bread making depends how much starter you use, at
what hydration and how much you care at all as long as the bread comes
out fine.
If you make a particular dough, you may notice hydration changes of 1 %
have an effect.
If your starter has 100 % hydration and you use 15 % starter flour in
your (assumed white flour) dough, 1000 g dough weight, 2 % salt, 60 %
dough hydration, the total water is 370 g and from that, the starter
water is 93 g.
( pulled this from my calculator:
http://samartha.net/cgi-bin/SDcalc04.pl )
If you vary your starter by 10 %, the water from that changes by 9 g
which is 3 % in total dough and you sure will notice that.
There is no way to avoid considering starter flour and water in your
bread making and you can pretty much neglect the fermentation losses
If you make your starter amount so small that the water falls below 1 %
- you're growing a new starter.
Sam