Had a run-in with a sticky dough situation at the county fair bake-off last weekend...

I entered the county fair bake-off in Springfield last weekend, thinking my sourdough was solid. But my dough was so sticky I couldn't shape it right on the table, and I ended up making a mess trying to add more flour. The judge just looked at me and said, 'You're fighting the hydration instead of working with it.' That comment made me realize I've been obsessed with high hydration recipes without understanding how to handle them. Now I'm going back to basics with a 65% hydration loaf until I get the feel down. Has anyone else bombed a competition over something simple like dough stickiness?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper69316d ago

Oh man, I feel this so hard. I once brought a ciabatta to a local competition and it was basically a pancake because I was too scared to wet my hands and just kept adding flour like a mad scientist. The judge took one look at my sad flat bread and said "it's not a brick, it's a milestone" which I'm pretty sure was a polite way of saying I ruined it. Now I just make biscuits where I can't mess up the hydration no matter how hard I try lol.

blair59716d ago

Tbh that "it's not a brick, it's a milestone" comment from the judge is actually pretty solid advice if you think about it. Nobody talks about how much pressure you put on yourself in those competitions and how that makes you grip the dough harder and mess with it more than you should. Sometimes bombing hard is the only way to finally learn to relax your hands and let the dough tell you what it needs.