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bread alone

saintdennis's picture
saintdennis

bread alone

   I'm reading the book "Bread Alone" by Daniel Leader.The problem is on the page 58, temperature of flour,temperature of your kitchen and friction factor. What is factor?? If I mix the dough one minute that the dough will rise 1F and if I will mix it let's say 20 minutes that the dough will rise 20F??? He is saying that his friction factor number is 14. He is saying 60 F flour temperature, 80 F kitchen temperature and 14 F friction factor total is 154 F then 240 F ideal total minus 154 F real total is 86 F temperature to make the water. How he found the friction number with out the mix water and flour first??

 

                                 Saintdennis

dolfs's picture
dolfs

Friction factor can only be found by doing a trial run. Mix a dough with known temperature for water, flour and room (assuming no preferments) and record final dough temperature. The friction factor is now experimentally determined as the sum of the temperatures of water, flour and room minus 3 times the measured temperature of the dough.

Note that the friction factor depends on your mixer, your ingredients (both amounts and specific ingredients), mixing time, and mixing speed (there may be other smaller influences which we’ll ignore). Thus the friction factor your find using the process above is only valid for that specific case. Having said that, as you do this experiment you will get a feel for the range of friction factors you encounter in your typical setups and you may find it is narrow enough to just always work with the middle.

You should also realize that trying to adjust water temperature so that your final dough will end up at a desired temperature is really most important for production bakers that need a predictable starting point for their fermentation so they can "know" how long it will take (almost exactly) and stay on schedule. For most home bakers this is not necessary and ending up with your dough anywhere in the 70-78F range will work just fine. You will want to ensure things are not too cold to get fermentation started (at an appreciable rate), and not too hot (to either kill the yeast or ferment so fast that flavor does not develop enough). That is another reason why you may be able to just work with a single friction factor as a practical approach although technically it is not right. 


--dolf


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saintdennis's picture
saintdennis

  Dolfs,

 thank you very much for your help.I'm reading so many books on baking and this was first I do not understand.Thank you for your help again

                                                          Saintdennis