Flour by weight question

[needscoffee]

@TriPolar

Flour mills were traditionally very dry environments because of all the flour in the air. I think modern mills maintain a humidity controlled environment for consistency and safety considerations. Unfortunately an expert on flour mills I knew was lost to COVID or I could find more info about this easily.

A food technologist told me that flour mills have to keep spraying water on the flour that’s being ground because it’s such a fire hazard.

[TriPolar]

Right. And an explosion danger also. I’m sure OSHA is concerned about air quality also. I would imagine in a modern mill there is a near complete containment of the ingredients inside well grounded machinery pre and post processing to minimize problems.

[puzzlegal]

@Mangetout

Yes and no - it is a weight recipe, but the objective is not to measure hydration, it’s to control it; high hydration recipes require a different kind of handling to lower hydration, but it’s on a sort of a gradient - the higher the hydration, the more pertinent becomes the special handling.

Or to put it another way, the hydration level of a bread dough is the most significant determining factor on how it will need to be handled and how it will turn out.

Well, i was confused because i thought we were discussing whether to measure the flour by weight or volume, and then “by hydration” got thrown out, and i thought maybe that was a direct measure of wetness, rather then just guidelines for the ratio of flour to wet ingredients. But, if I’m understanding correctly, it’s not. It’s just a category of recipes that are based on weight.

[Mangetout]

Yeah. It’s a bread baker thing - pretty much just a concise way of specifying a bread recipe without prescribing any scale.

[bob_2]

@dgy

So, for an Rx that calls for 2C flour, 2t baking powder and 1t of salt, would you first weigh the flour, then ADD the (equivalent of) 2t baking powder and finally 1t of salt?

This is nonsensical. I would weigh the flour and fat and then add smaller amounts of ingredients by the teaspoon or “pinch”.

Eggs are always variable, so liquid ingredients are usually added until the consistency looks right.