Question about dough hydration after a brutal Tuesday shift

Last Tuesday was a nightmare at my kitchen. I tried to batch out 40 sourdough loaves for a local cafe order and my dough was like concrete by the third mix. I keep my hydration around 75% but the flour must have been extra thirsty that day. Has anyone else had a run of bad luck with dough that just won't cooperate no matter what you do?

2 comments

2 Comments

anthony4261mo ago

I gotta push back on blaming the flour for being "extra thirsty." You said yourself the hydration was at 75% which is pretty standard for sourdough. I think the real issue is you might be overcomplicating things by trying to batch 40 loaves at once without adjusting your technique for scale. When you multiply the recipe that big, small errors in measuring or mixing get magnified. You probably just needed to bump the hydration up a bit or let the dough rest longer between folds. It's not the flour's fault, it's workflow.

betht321mo ago

My buddy Jake had a total meltdown last month trying to do 60 baguettes for a farmers market. He'd been making them for years at home no problem, but scaling up just wrecked him. His dough turned into this sticky, angry mess that wouldn't hold shape no matter what he did. He kept adding more flour and making it worse somehow. He finally just tossed the whole batch and started over with like half the recipe and way more bench rests between folds. Took him twice as long but the second batch actually worked. Sometimes you just gotta reset instead of fighting it.