Experiment

[RHawthorne]

It would seem to me that if the flour is that dry, the enzymes in it are probably way past the point of being viable enough to use. But apparently you got a good final product.

[wotavidone]

By "dry" I meant that this whole wheat flour absorbs massive amounts of water. i.e. whereas my Gaganis Bros flour makes a nice silky smooth dough at 60% hydration, this stuff needs more like 80-90% water to make a barely usable dough.
I thought it would be too old, but the starter really took off, and it had a very positive contribution to the flavour of the crust.
I will work through what I have left, but there may be no more, The wholesaler I got it from has closed down.

[Heikjo]

I just had to make this. I see where you are coming from and won’t disagree. The best part is that my dough fermented more with the extra 0.08 g, as I was hoping it would. But that’s what we can get for single experiments. It’s repetition and consistency that matters.

I agree that for miniscule amounts of IDY, you may be better off using volume rather than mass, but my doughs still produce somewhat consistent results with the scale. Not that the scale is accurate down to 0.01 grams, but it can tell the difference between 0.25 and 0.75.

[wotavidone]

I just had to make this. I see where you are coming from and won’t disagree. The best part is that my dough fermented more with the extra 0.08 g, as I was hoping it would. But that’s what we can get for single experiments. It’s repetition and consistency that matters.

I agree that for miniscule amounts of IDY, you may be better off using volume rather than mass, but my doughs still produce somewhat consistent results with the scale. Not that the scale is accurate down to 0.01 grams, but it can tell the difference between 0.25 and 0.75.

weigh 0.25g a dozen times, then combine them al together and see if it says you really have three grams.
then weigh 0.75 a dozen times and see if it says you have 9 grams.

[Heikjo]

12x0.25 became 2.99 g
12x0.75 became 9.01 g

I’ve had this scale for years and I’m not surprised about the result. The higher number of measurements you do, the more I’d expect the sum to be close to the intended sum. I know it can’t tell 0.01 g apart accurately, but I have tried a few other 0.01 scales that felt much worse than this one. Whenever I use it and add or retract small amounts, it just looks like the numbers are pretty accurate.

The question is perhaps not if 12x0.25 becomes 3, but how much each sample actually weigh and what the variance is. Does it range from 0.2-0.3, 0.15-0.35 or worse? I can’t say, other than that it feels pretty accurate. And the important part is that it is consistent enough that I can use amounts under 1 gram of IDY.

You mentioned earlier that other factors can have as big if not bigger influence, like dough and fermentation temperatures, which I agree with. I don’t know how much of a difference 10% of IDY makes if you had a 100% controlled environment and made two doughs.