On 11/4/2019 at 11:08 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:I am sad. I have an ongoing problem with getting my dough strong enough. Last week I beat it on high speed and got some strength, but my crumb suffered. This week I tried doubling my recipe to 1,200 g flour at 68% hydration to see if the larger batch would mix better. It didn't. By the Modernist Bread method I mixed 8 minutes on low, added the salt slurry, mixed 2 minutes more, and then 2 minutes on speed 2.
9 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:I am firmly persuaded my problem is with the mixing. I use a KitchenAid KSM8990WH. According to many authors bread dough is supposed to form a ball around the dough hook. My dough does not. It sits in a puddle in the bottom of the bowl. Unless I run the KitchenAid on ludicrous speed,* in which case the dough mixes but the resulting crumb suffers mightily.
I think you may be right. When I was making dough in my KitchenAid, there's no way that 10 minutes on low + 2 minutes on speed 2 would have formed any reasonable quantity of gluten in my dough.
Does Modernist Bread specifically call for a KA in its timings?
Are you letting the dough rest and autolyse between the 8 minute mix and the salt slurry? That might help the gluten form on its own a bit.
Rather than increasing the speed, I would let it continue running on speed 2 at the end until you get more structure.
Final thing I might try is backing off on the water a bit -- I make another bread around 68% and humidity can really mess with it.
21 minutes ago, teonzo said:It takes some time for the dough to form a ball on the hook, but your times should be enough. Beware about one important thing: never go over speed 2 for bread making and similar doughs, otherwise you will ruin your stand mixer. It's stated in the instruction manual.
Sadly I can vouch for this from personal experience. Granted I have one of the early-aughts "Pro" models with the plastic gear housing. Need to actually take it apart this weekend to start the repair.
