I goofed.

The plan was to recreate the 70% hydration loaf I baked yesterday but by kneading the dough rather than folding during its bulk fermentation phase. I already told you earlier about getting Covey Jr. ready (200g of starter from the discard.)

I took Covey Jr., 400g of starter, 12g of salt and 350g of water and put them in the bowl of my stand mixer. The only problem is is that I was supposed to do 250g of water since Covey Jr. already has 100g of water in it. Instead of a 70% hydration dough I started to make a 90% hydration one!

Silly me. I didn’t realize my mistake until I had started the mixer and saw a batter instead of a dough. A true “D’oh” moment! I did some quick math and figured that I needed to add 143g of flour to get it back to 70% hydration. I did that and turned the mixer back on.

OK. Now it looks like a dough (I’ll spare you an image of what it looked like before I added more flour) and I let the mixer at it for 7 or 8 minutes. It’s a very soft dough, as you might imagine, and very sticky. Once it was done with the mixer I put it into an oiled bowl gave it a turn around, covered it with plastic wrap and am now letting it rest. In a few hours (I’m thinking 3 hours) I’ll shape it and put it in a proofing basket for a good night’s sleep in the fridge.

So this isn’t quite the experiment I had planned this morning (which probably means I’ll run the planned one tomorrow) but it should be interesting. The hydration is what I wanted I just don’t know if the 200g of starter is going to be enough to get me the results I want. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. Stay tuned!