Compensating for extra moisture from cold flour
I've been baking Hallah of late from a high-precision recipe: weights and percentages provided for all ingredients. I store flour in the freezer. Typically, the dough comes out considerably stickier than intended. End result is OK, but process is messy. So, based on other reading, I assume that my chilly flour is busily absorbing atmospheric moisture. I'm wondering if anyone can offer a rule of thumb for how much water to subtract or flour to add to compensate for this effect over 795 grams of flour?
Best Answer
No, it has nothing to do with atmospheric moisture. It is the temperature itself. You get much more gluten with cold dough, and it is also very sticky and inelastic. If this is the effect you want, continue doing it. In fact, some authors (e.g. Corriher) recommend making very high hydration doughs with substituting some of the water for crushed ice, to make them more manageable.
If you don't want this (and most recipes are developed for room temperature ingredients), then you can't get the standard condition of your dough except by using room temperature flour. If you don't mind the different gluten texture in the baked product, but want to make the dough less sticky so you can handle it better, you should be adding water, not removing it. This will dilute the dough, so it doesn't end up so tightly cramped. I can't give you a rule of thumb for how much, you'll have to decide for yourself what feels comfortable to you.
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How do you remove humidity from flour?
Consider warming the flour through, you have just sifted, in a low oven, to help dry it out a little. Then sift it again, with plenty of fall to help it cool. Rebag it and this time keep it in the fridge.Does it matter if flour cold?
Cold flour doesn't change the flour itself, but it can affect your recipe. Bread doughs made with cold flour can take longer to rise, for instance. Flour warms pretty quickly, though \u2014 just measure out your flour first and let it warm on the counter while you gather your other ingredients.How do you raise dough when its cold?
While we swear by the oven and boiling water method, you can still try a few other ways to proof bread even when it's a touch too cold inside. You can set a heating pad on low, layer a dishtowel on top and then set down your bowl or pan of dough. This will give your bread some extra warmth.Does flour attract moisture?
Flour is hygroscopic, and quickly scavenges any available humidity from its environment: So my initial "quick and dirty" test overestimated the humidity offset in flour weight. By the time you store flour in a 'typical home" with humidity above 20%, most of the rapid moisture absorption has occurred.Flour Moisture Matters
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