Friction Factor in Bread

Do you remember me saying that water temperature for dough was an important bit of breadology I learned at school? I burrowed into one of the textbooks and found a reasonable explanation of how to figure out the temperature your water should be when making bread for best results.

It goes like this:

1. Let's assume you want your final dough temperature (final meaning after it's mixed) to be 80 degrees. Why 80? Because dough that is too warm or too cool won't behave predictably and move through the 12 steps of dough production in a manner that suggests uniformity and professionalism.

So multiply 80 by 3 (assuming here that you aren't using a preferment as a starter. If you are, multiply by 4). It's a fixed rule. Use 3 in this case.

2. 80 x 3 = 240.

3. Now using your thermometer, take a temperature of the flour and the room, plus 20 degrees to allow for the friction caused by mixing (there is a way to calculate this number, but let's keep things simple for starters). Say the flour comes out to 68 and the room is 72, and the friction is 20. What should the water temperature be for your dough?

4. 68 + 72 + 20 = 160. Now subtract 160 from 240 like this: 240-160 = 80.

5. 80 degrees is the number you want your water to be before you add it to the dough.

Please don't get all analytical here and say "hey, you started with the number 80, so why not just go with 80?" Well because frankly, the room and the flour were fairly warm in this example. Suppose the room was ghastly scorching, or you had stored your flour in the fridge. You need to take those conditions into account to get the best result for your bread.

Not to preach but ingredients cost money, so why throw good money after a bad result? The equation above gets interesting when you have to make the water very cold, because it flies in the face of what you've thought all along about yeast needing a sort of balmy bath water in which to spring to life.

And speaking of yeast, keep it simple, too. In general, use no more yeast than is necessary in the recipe. Adding more yeast will not improve the flavor, quite the opposite. It will speed up fermentation, but that can be a bad thing. When it's too fast, the dough doesn't develop the depth of flavor you're looking for.

Long, slow and cool is what you want.