Where did it go?

[Drgolf369]

I mixed a batch of Caputo 00 flour by hand following the mixing dechnique of Pascquale Makishima utilizing a large stainless Steele bowl. I measured 500 K flour, 320K water, 15K Kosher Salt and 1/2 gm yeast.
Combining the water and salt first, then dissolving the yeast. I added about 7/8 of the flour and mixed it for 5 minutes, scraped by hands and the bowl as thoroughly as possible, then let it rest for 5 minutes covered with plastic cling wrap. Added the rest of the flour slowly and kneaded for 10 minutes. Covered the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest for 40 minutes. It was kneadsble but stiff before the 40 minute rest. The input was 846 grams. I made 3 dough balls of 270 grams totaling 810 grams and had only 10 grams left over.i lost 26 grams of I would think mostly water because the dough was very stiff. I did not have this problem when using a planetary mixer with a fairly well fitted plastic cover
The question is, is it better to use a machine with a controlled environment which is non porus, or hands in an open environment?
This is really fun.
Joel

[dmcavanagh]

One ounce of water weights app. 28-29g., so apparently an ounce of water evaporated during mixing.

[Drgolf369]

So is machine mixing better?

[Pete-zza]

Joel,

I added up the weights of all of the ingredients and got 835.5 grams. I believe you meant to say that the input was about 836 grams rather than 846 grams. I calculated a loss of about 3%. That would not be unusual for a hand kneaded dough. It is also the reason why the dough calculating tools have what is called a "bowl residue compensation" input to compensate for such losses. Those losses are typically due to small amounts of the ingredients and dough that stick to surfaces of the bowl, measuring cups (mainly water and any other wet ingredients), the agitators (hook, paddle, etc.), work surfaces, dough scrapers, spoons an spatulas, and the hands. In your case, you perhaps ended up with more of the dough sticking to your fingers. I have found that when I use a standard stand mixer, a value of 1.5% for the bowl residue compensation works well. For a food processor or a bread maker, a value of 1% is a good value. For hand kneading, 3% or more would be quite normal. Recently, I have been using a food processor to make a dough with a lot of sticky, gooey molasses. I have been using 4% as the bowl residue compensation. I thought for sure by scraping everything and getting all of the ingredients into the processor bowl and off of my fingers that I wouldn't have such losses, but I was wrong.

If you use one of the dough calculating tools, such as the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, you can use the bowl residue compensation feature to modify the ingredient values to compensate for the losses that are likely to occur. If it turns out that the final dough weighs more than the dough without the bowl residue compensation, which can occur if the value of the bowl residue compensation was too high, then you simply scale the weight of the dough ball back to the calculated value. So, my view is that it really doesn't matter which method you use so long as you select the appropriate bowl residue compensation value.

Peter

[Drgolf369]

Ok, thanks. But is the bowl residue equal in all the ingredients or is there mort water loss due to evaporation and absorption that should be compensated?

[Pete-zza]

Ok, thanks. But is the bowl residue equal in all the ingredients or is there mort water loss due to evaporation and absorption that should be compensated?

Joel,

The bowl residue compensation increases the amounts of all of the ingredients by the same percent. It does not increase the amount of water disproportionately to compensate for evaporation or absorption problems. Those would have to be dealt with by adjusting the formula hydration. You normally don't want to allow a dough to lose moisture through evaporation, as by exposing the dough uncovered to the atmosphere, since that will allow a "skin" to form on the dough ball if the dough ball is left uncovered for too long. To prevent that from happening, you can do what you did--cover the dough ball with a sheet of plastic wrap. You could also use a damp towel, a container lid, or simply coat the dough ball with a thin film of oil. Since you took steps to limit evaporation of moisture in your dough ball, I tend to think that any evaporation would have been minimal in your case.

Peter