Critical Measurements--Flour

Flour and salt are the two critical quantities in bread making: with very few exceptions, everything else can be added or not depending on what you like and what you're making.

I’ll talk about salt another day.

The flour-to-liquid ratio is most difficult of the two critical measures. You may find exact quantities in a recipe which may or may not work, so to consistently make great bread, you're going to have to get good at judging when the dough has had enough flour.

Many recipes refer to dough as being "stiff" or "slack" but those are totally objective and only learned through experience.

For baguettes & artisanal bread, you want the dough very "slack" -- it will be sticky, so add most of the flour and stir with the handle of a wooden spoon, and then add some more and stir and then add a couple tablespoons at a time. If you add too much, the dough will be too firm and won’t rise as much as you’d like or will be extremely slow (like 2 or 3 days) to rise — but you could still use this very firm dough to make pretzels. If the dough is too soft you won’t be able to handle it to shape it.

Don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time or the first six times.

So start with too little flour and add it until it’s right. When you watched your granny make bread, she added flour and kneaded until the dough wasn’t sticky any more; for french / italian / artisanal bread, we’re not doing that. We’re not kneading it at all and the dough is going to be much stickier.

Here’s how to do the calculation of liquid to flour ratios for bread:

• The rule of thumb is 5:3 flour : liquid by weight.
• this translates to 2¾c flour for every cup of liquid OR
• if you are using your kitchen scale, 170g flour for every 100g of water, milk, or stock (think about how much salt the stock might have in it.)
• Here's an article with a handy chart

Or more directly: