Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza

^* The baker’s percentage for levain is the amount of flour in the levain expressed as a percentage of the total flour in the recipe.

Making a Bread (or Pizza) Dough You Can Call Your Own

You can think of this book’s recipes as templates that allow you to adjust flour blends, the leavening, the timing, or the amount of water in a dough, for whatever reason: taste, physical structure (for pizza doughs especially), timeline, convenience, or if you’re like me, just for the fun of it, to see what happens.

Have it your way. The recipes in this book are adaptable, and I encourage you to experiment with them to create breads or pizzas that are all your own.

That having been said, I also encourage you to first follow the recipes as written, to build your confidence as a baker and get familiar with my recipes and methods. Then, once you’ve been successful with these recipes and know what they produce, you can customize to suit your own taste, pantry, or whimsy.

You might want to try making a 50 percent whole wheat bread based on my Saturday 75% Whole Wheat Bread recipe. Or you might want to change that recipe to include some rye flour, or you might decide to use just 20 percent whole wheat. Perhaps you want to experiment with a liquid levain, using Pain de Campagne or any of my other levain breads as a starting point.

And even when you want to follow the recipes exactly, you may have life issues pop out of nowhere that require an on-the-fly schedule adjustment. This happens to most of us. In this essay, I provide tips and tricks that will allow you to adapt, even to unforeseen circumstances. I’ll start with adjusting hydration level, then address changing the blend of flours. Next, I’ll discuss how you can modify a recipe’s schedule. Then, for the advanced baker, I’ll discuss some options regarding levain. I have also included some notes on recipe shorthand, which is a useful way to document your work as you go, since the long elapsed timelines are easy to forget (what time did I mix the dough?), especially if you want to refer to them for future bakes.

You’ll note that volume conversions are omitted from these recipe tables. If you really want to control the variables discussed in the sections that follow, you need to measure your ingredients by weight, for accuracy’s sake.

CHANGING HYDRATION

A good candidate for changing dough hydration is the Overnight Pizza Dough with Poolish. That recipe has 75 percent hydration. But you might want to change the hydration to 70 percent to get a stiffer dough—many will find a stiffer dough easier to shape into a pizza than the softer, stickier 75 percent dough. I get that. And you still get the poolish flavor benefit.

Adjusting the hydration is simple. Put less water in the dough! Since the total flour weight is 1,000 grams (as it is in every bread and pizza dough recipe in this book), to change the hydration to 70 percent, simply change total water in the dough from 750 grams to 700 grams (70 percent of the total flour weight). Use the same poolish as in the original recipe and adjust the amount of water added in the final dough mix to 200 grams. That’s it. Because this dough is stiffer, it needs only a single fold.

POOLISH PIZZA DOUGH WITH 70 PERCENT HYDRATION

Final Dough			Baker’s Formula
INGREDIENT	FINAL DOUGH MIX QUANTITY	QUANTITY IN POOLISH	TOTAL RECIPE QUANTITY	BAKER’S PERCENTAGE
White flour	500 g	500 g	1,000 g	100%
Water	200 g, 105ºF (38ºC)	500 g	700 g	70%
Fine sea salt	20 g	0	20 g	2%
Instant dried yeast	0	0.4 g (scant ⅛ tsp)	0.4 g	0.04%
Poolish	1,000 g			50%

Here’s another example of how to play around with hydration: Say you wake up in the morning and decide you want to make bread in time for dinner that evening. The Saturday Breads are designed for that schedule. But you want to try using more water in the dough, say 78 percent hydration instead of 72 percent. So you use 780 grams of water instead of the 720 grams called for in the recipe. Because the dough will be wetter and more slack, it needs an additional couple of folds to make up for that. That will give the dough the structural support it needs, helping build up the gluten network, which is relaxed by the extra water.

CHANGING FLOUR BLENDS

I do this all the time. If you want to work with a specific recipe but adjust the flour blend, I think you will find it satisfying to know you have the recipe format down and can make flour changes to suit your taste (or just to use what you have available). The most important thing is to stick with the same total amount of flour in the recipe, since amounts of all the other ingredients are based on ratios to the total flour weight.

Let’s change the flour blend in the Overnight White Bread. The recipe calls for all white flour, but we can change it to a mix of 70 percent white flour, 20 percent whole wheat flour, and 10 percent rye flour. (This will make a bread with a similar blend to what I used in the Field Blend recipes) Change the white flour to 700 grams, add 200 grams of whole wheat flour and 100 grams of light or dark rye flour—and if you want, you can add a little more water, say 20 grams. But since the rye flour is less absorbent than other flours, for now let’s keep the water quantity the same. The yeast and salt quantities also remain the same.

OVERNIGHT “WHITE” BREAD, NOW WITH WHITE, WHOLE WHEAT, RYE FLOUR BLEND

INGREDIENT	QUANTITY	BAKER’S PERCENTAGE
White flour	700 g	70%
Whole wheat flour	200 g	20%
Light or dark rye flour, room temperature	100 g	10%
Water	780 g, 90ºF to 95ºF (32ºC to 35ºC)	78%
Instant dried yeast	0.8 g (scant ¼ tsp)	0.08%
Fine sea salt	22 g	2.2%

ADJUSTING THE SCHEDULE

Sometimes you need to adjust timing for the recipe—either because you know in advance that you need more time before working with the dough at the next stage, or because something unexpected comes up and you realize you need to delay the dough. Because bulk fermentation and proofing time are relative to the amount of leavening and the temperature the dough is held at, you can use those variables to give yourself more time. Note that I don’t advocate speeding up fermentation or proofing, as this can adversely affect quality.

Here’s an example: Say you want to make one of the Saturday Breads, but an eight-hour bulk fermentation works better with your schedule than the five hours in the recipe. In this case, I’d recommend reducing the amount of yeast by about a third and keeping the temperatures the same. Make notes about what you do and how it works out, then adjust the amount of yeast accordingly the next time.

Here’s another example, still using the Saturday Breads. Say the day gets on, and by the time you shape the loaves your evening’s plans have changed and you won’t be around to bake the bread. Immediately after shaping, put the loaves in the refrigerator (in their proofing baskets in nonperforated plastic bags). Then bake them the next morning. Alternatively, say you just need to extend the time between shaping and baking by about an hour. That’s fine; just refrigerate the shaped loaves about 50 minutes to an hour after they were shaped; they should hold for a couple of hours. Bake them cold. You won’t need to let them come back to room temperature before baking.

Here’s another scenario: Perhaps you mixed a final dough at 3 p.m. that would normally be mature and ready to divide and shape into loaves at 8 p.m., but you have a meeting from 7 until 9 p.m. As in the previous example, anytime you need to stretch out the timeline, simply refrigerate the dough. Depending on the outside temperature, you might alternatively put the dough tub or shaped loaves outside—covered if in the dough tub or in plastic bags if shaped and in proofing baskets. There will always be some guesswork in the timing. Keep in mind that it takes awhile for the dough to chill, so it will continue to evolve in the cooler temperatures.

When retarding the dough in this way, beware of any temptation to move on to the next step before the dough is fully evolved. As with adjusting hydration, it’s helpful to be familiar with the recipe so you’ll be able to recognize when the dough is optimally fermented or proofed. With experience, you’ll learn to judge by its appearance.

My overall guidance is that you can elongate the process by refrigerating the dough or holding it at cooler temperatures during bulk fermentation and proofing. With practice you’ll learn how to do this and still get excellent (sometimes improved) results. Just be careful not to use dough that isn’t fully fermented or proofed when you move on to the next stage, because you’ll sacrifice flavor and volume in the baked bread.

On the flip side, there are always going to be times when your dough is moving too slow—this is often a problem in the wintertime. If you have a dough that is supposed to triple in size in five hours but hasn’t, or an overnight dough that doubled when it should have increased in volume at least two and a half times, find a warm spot to speed up the dough. The most convenient place I’ve found is in my oven—with the door ajar and the oven light on, it’s just the right temperature. You can use the same approach for a poolish or biga that isn’t fully developed. Don’t remove the lid of your dough tub because that will dry out the dough. But do pay attention. Warm it up, and you can use your probe thermometer to check the dough temperature; best to not let it get much above 80 degrees. When the dough does get warmer it is fun to see how quickly it evolves. This slow dough situation happens occasionally to every baker. Don’t panic, just use your warm spot!

FLOUR ABSORBENCY

As noted, whole wheat flour absorbs more water than white flour. Therefore, if you increase the ratio of white flour in a recipe, you’ll need less water to achieve the same dough consistency. Conversely, if you increase the ration of whole wheat flour, you’ll need to add more water to achieve the same consistency. Of course, to make a judgment call on the consistency, it’s best to be familiar with the recipe using the called-for amounts of ingredients first, so you’ll have a baseline to compare to. When increasing the amount of water, it’s best to add it in small increments, and to weigh the water rather than eyeballing it. By volume, 30 or 40 grams of water looks like a very small amount, but it can make a big difference.

LEVAIN OPTIONS

This section is mostly for the advanced baker, but you don’t need to be a total bread geek to use this guidance. I’ll offer two examples here, and from that point you can extrapolate to other “what if?” scenarios.

Adjusting the Flour Blend in Warm-Spot Levain

First, let’s look at an example of how to use the all-white flour levain from my White Flour Warm-Spot White Levain Bread recipe in other breads. This is a lovely levain culture with special flavor characteristics, so you may want to work with it beyond the all-white flour recipe in this book. This is really as easy as adjusting flour blends, as described earlier in this essay, using some whole wheat or rye flour, or maybe spelt or kamut flour, in the final dough mix. Just be sure to use the same amount of flour in the final dough mix. Instead of using 750 grams of white flour in the final dough mix, use a new combination of flours that adds up to 750 grams. The example below is for a 40 percent whole wheat version; 40 percent of 1,000 grams (the total flour in the recipe, including that in the levain) is 400, so use 400 grams of whole wheat flour and 350 grams of white flour. Likewise, you could use, for example, 100 grams of rye flour, 200 grams of whole wheat flour, and 450 grams of white flour to total 750 grams of flour in the final dough mix.

In the example below, more water is added to compensate for the higher absorbency of the whole wheat flour: 20 grams of water, increasing the hydration from 78 to 80 percent.

WARM-SPOT LEVAIN, 40 PERCENT WHOLE WHEAT

Final Dough			Baker’s Formula
INGREDIENT	FINAL DOUGH MIX QUANTITY	QUANTITY IN LEVAIN	TOTAL RECIPE QUANTITY	BAKER’S PERCENTAGE
White flour	350 g	250 g	600 g	60%
Whole wheat flour	400 g	0	400 g	40%
Water	625 g, 80ºF (27ºC)	175 g	800 g	80%
Fine sea salt	20 g	0	20 g	2%
Instant dried yeast	1 g (¼ tsp)	0	1 g	0.1%
Levain	425 g			25%^*

^* The baker’s percentage for levain is the amount of flour in the levain expressed as a percentage of the total flour in the recipe.

You may have noticed that the White Flour Warm-Spot Levain Bread recipe contains 25 percent of the recipe’s flour in the levain culture and uses only 0.1 percent yeast, whereas the hybrid leavening recipes in this book have 20 percent levain and 0.2 percent yeast, and the pure levains have 12 percent levain and no added yeast. I wanted more levain in this recipe to emphasize the specific character of this style of levain. With more levain, I needed less instant yeast. You could take it further and eliminate the baker’s yeast altogether, and just give the dough a little longer to rise.

Liquid Levain

Liquid levain is a term any good professional baker knows. As commonly used, it implies a levain culture with equal weights of water and flour and typically all white flour. Liquid levain imparts its own specific character to the bread: I associate it with lactic flavors, which tend to be milky or buttery. If particularly ripe, it might develop a slight overripe fruit taste—this is caused by the volatile esters that form from the combination of alcohol (from extended yeast fermentation) and acids (from bacterial fermentation).

To create a liquid levain, use this book’s base levain culture, as described in chapter 8. Then, the day before mixing your final dough, follow the instructions below to transition your levain to a liquid culture. Anytime you change from your base levain culture, the longer you maintain the new conditions and feeding protocol, the more it will take on a new flavor profile, as the wild yeast and bacteria and their acids thrive in the new environment.

As you’ll see, the Day 1 feeding is at 100 percent hydration, rather than 80 percent as in the base levain. It also uses only a bit of the mature base levain for the first feeding.

SAMPLE SCHEDULE: Day 1, starting with the base levain from chapter 8, feed the new levain at 9 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. Day 2: feed the new levain at 9 a.m., mix the final dough at 3 p.m., shape into loaves at 8 p.m., proof the loaves in the refrigerator overnight, and bake the next morning.

LIQUID LEVAIN

DAY 1

First Levain Feeding			Second Levain Feeding
INGREDIENT	QUANTITY	INGREDIENT	QUANTITY
Mature, active levain	50 g	Levain from the first feeding	250 g
White flour	250 g	White flour	250 g
Water	250 g, 95ºF (35ºC)	Water	250 g, 85ºF (29ºC)

DAY 2

Third Levain Feeding
INGREDIENT	QUANTITY
Levain from the second feeding	100 g
White flour	500 g
Water	500 g, 85ºF to 90ºF (29ºC to 32ºC)

A good recipe for experimenting with a liquid levain is the Pain de Campagne. Substitute your new liquid levain for the standard base levain and use the amounts of ingredients indicated below. Since there’s more water in the liquid levain than the book’s base levain, there’s less water in the ingredients for the final dough than in the original recipe. However, the total hydration remains the same, at 78 percent. The amount of water in the final dough mix is simply decreased by 40 grams to compensate for the additional 40 grams of water in the levain added to the final dough mix.

PAIN DE CAMPAGNE WITH LIQUID LEVAIN

Final Dough			Baker’s Formula
INGREDIENT	FINAL DOUGH MIX QUANTITY	QUANTITY IN LEVAIN	TOTAL RECIPE QUANTITY	BAKER’S PERCENTAGE
White flour	700 g	200 g	900 g	90%
Whole wheat flour	100 g	0	100 g	10%
Water	580 g, 90ºF to 95ºF (32ºC to 35ºC)	200 g	780 g	78%
Fine sea salt	21 g	0	21 g	2.1%
Instant dried yeast	2 g (½ tsp)	0	2 g	0.2%
Levain	400 g			20%

RECIPE SHORTHAND

Any time I make an adjustment to a recipe, I record it, even if only temporarily, so I can track what I’ve done and not depend on my fallible memory to recall if I put, for example, 560 grams or 540 grams of flour in the final dough mix eight hours ago. I keep a pocket-size notebook in my kitchen for just this purpose and I use recipe shorthand. I thought I’d share my system with you, and this seems like a good place, because whenever you tweak a recipe, you should record what you did for reference in process, as well as for later if you want to keep track of what works and what doesn’t.

Here’s my recipe shorthand for Overnight Pizza Dough with Poolish:

– Poolish: 500g flour, 500g water 80°F, 0.4g yeast. 12–14 hrs at room temp 70°F.

– No autolyse.

– Final dough: 500g flour, 250g water 105°F, 20g salt, poolish. 2 folds. 5–6 hrs to 2½x volume. Divide into 5 (350g each) and shape into balls. 30–60 mins at room temp, then into fridge.

Then I take notes in process like this:

– Poolish mix 7 p.m.

– Dough mix, water only 95°F, 9 a.m. end mix temp 73°F. Use warmer water next time.

– 2 folds.

– Dough at about 2½x at 3 p.m. Dough balls into fridge at 3:30 p.m.

Here is my recipe shorthand for Field Blend #1:

– Levain: Feed first thing in the morning. Use 100g mature levain, 400g white, 100g whole wheat, 400g water, 85°F to 90°F. 6 hours at room temp. before final dough mix.

– Autolyse: 590g white, 60g whole wheat, 150g white rye, 590g water, 90°F to 95°F. Rest 20–30 mins.

– Final dough mix: Add 360g levain, 21g salt, 2g yeast. 3 or 4 folds. 5 hrs to 2½x. Divide, shape, wrap, and into fridge 12 hours.

– Bake 475°F, 30 mins lid on, 20 mins lid off.

My in-process notes might look something like this:

– Levain mix, 8 a.m.

– Autolyse with 90°F water. Final mix temp 80°F. Use cooler water next time. End mix 2 p.m.

– 4 folds.

– Divide, shape, into fridge at 7 p.m.

– Bake 9 a.m. Good result. Yay!