For those who contemplate trying some of Tom's beer dough recipes, there are several things they should be aware of.
First, the Power flour that Tom has been using has a rated absorption value of 65%. That is a couple percent higher than most competitive high-gluten flours. And, from reports I have read from other members who have used that flour for other dough recipes, they have been able to pretty much use a hydration value of around 64-65%. So, that flour can take quite a bit of water.
Second, beer is mostly water. For a basic non-light beer, it is around 92%. However, Tom has been using beers that may have less water than 92%. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing the actual percent of water for the different beers he has been using. But, if Tom were to convert his volume recipes to weight formulations, it is possible that the formulations could vary from one to another based on the type of beer used. The variations might not be major but they may differ nonetheless and may affect the final hydration value (exclusive of the wetting effects of the oil).
Third, I believe Tom's work has been dedicated primarily to the home pizza maker and, for this reason, he has specified volumes rather than weights. However, if one wishes to convert his recipes to baker's percent format, for example, to make larger amounts of doughs for pizzas of different sizes, or to change values of ingredients, etc., they would need to know how much four cups of the Power flour weigh. If Tom has a decent digital scale, he should be able to weigh four cups of Power flour plus any bench flour that might be needed, and tell us what those numbers are. Alternatively, he would have to tell us exactly how he measures out his four cups of Power flour, and we would then have to cross our fingers that we are able to use the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator at
http://tools.foodsim.com/ to convert his volume measurements to weights. The conversions of the rest of his volume measurements to weights, for example, for the salt, yeast, sugar and oil, would be a straightforward exercise.
Fourth, I seriously doubt that the hydration of the latest formulation posted by Tom is anywhere near 85%. To get an accurate number, we would need to know the weight of four cups of the Power flour and make a judgment on the amount of water in the particular beer Tom is using in any given instance. But just using the KASL flour as a proxy in the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator, I would estimate the hydration value for Tom's latest dough to be in the range of around 71-77% (depending on whether he measures out the flour Textbook style or using the Medium method). And those numbers do not take into account any bench flour that he might use.
I do not personally see that practitioners of Tom's beer dough recipes should have serious problems with those recipes. They may have to do some tweaking of the amount of flour and/or beer to get the desired coherency and other characteristics of the final dough, but I don't see that as an impediment to achieving good results. But the piece of information that I think would be most useful is the weight of the four cups of Power flour or, alternatively, a descripition of the method that Tom uses to measure out the flour. Either of those two pieces of information will help people get closer to what Tom does.
Peter
Edit: Corrected hydration range.
