The one number you should never copy in a sourdough recipe

This sourdough formula is a tweaked version of Ed Tatton's country sourdough. Now I've dropped the hydration down from 82 percent to 74. The hydration is the adjustment that I make more than any other when I'm baking. I'm going to come on to why and how I did it later in the process. Now this one comes from Ed's book Bread and I promise you there is nothing run-of-the-mill about this book. It's completely plant-based and it goes way beyond bread. It's packed with super interesting recipes from beginner level all the way up. It's well worth a read. Let's get into this. Right so first up I'm adding 507 grams of water into my mixing bowl. Now that's followed by my flour blend and in it there's 652 grams of high protein white bread flour, 145 grams of stone ground whole wheat flour and 48 grams of stone ground rye. Next I'm adding in 241 grams of my bubbly sourdough starter. This is 100% hydrated and it's made with exactly the same bread flour I'm using in the dough. I'm going to give everything a super good mix. I just want to form it into a rough dough and I want to make sure there's no dry spots of flour. This entire fermentation chain, the start of the bulk and the proof was all carried out at 23 degrees celsius or 73 degrees fahrenheit. Right so after the hour's rest I'm going to load my bowl onto the Halo Pro. I'm going to start mixing at 15 percent, that's around 90 rpm. Now I favour mixing on slow speeds because it helps me keep the dough temperature in check. After around eight minutes or so that dough has become really well developed and it's time to add 19 grams of salt. Now I keep mixing until that dough has absorbed all of that salt and it doesn't feel gritty. Now I'm going to add a further 87 grams of water and I'm going to do that in three small additions. Between each one I'm going to let that dough come back together properly. Once the dough is nice and smooth and it's fully developed I can bring it all together, place it into my bowl, ready for the rest of the bulk fermentation. Now I've never worried too much about stretching lean doughs like this. If I'm around it might get two or three folds but if I'm not I really don't stress. This dough is a perfect case in point. I went out shortly after the bulk fermentation so I only got the chance to give it one coil fold and for this formula getting that mixing and the fermentation right were far more instrumental in the final result as you'll see soon. So that's it, one coil fold. Now this dough actually travelled quite quickly through the bulk or at least it seemed to. It's taken five hours from the first mix to get where we are now and the dough has risen by around 75%. Now I can feel that it's still a little bit slack but it's nothing that the pre-shape won't sort out. Now I should mention that another tweak I made to this formula was to scale the dough down to fit my oval bannetons. I never ever start a recipe without first making sure I've either got a basket that suits the recipe or I scale the formula to match the basket. Along with hydration adjustments it's one I reach for to fine tune all of the time. Right so after a 20 minute rest it's time to shape and as you probably know by now my process is pretty straightforward. My main concern or my main focus while I'm shaping is just to make sure that I'm building in some surface tension within the dough and of course I'm shaping it to fit the basket. Now because I've balanced the hydration for the flour blend the dough is actually quite easy to handle. It makes the shaping pretty easy and after a bath in rice flour the dough goes into the basket and it gets left to prove at ambient temperature. Now although I thought that bulk had traveled quite quickly this prove it actually took three hours. Now that tells me I probably could have pushed that bulk just a little bit longer but not going to make too much difference. As long as the bulk and the prove are properly balanced and they're tuned in everything will be fine. These are going to prove just a touch more in the fridge overnight ready for baking in the morning. Okay so for today's bake I've set my oven to bake mode which heats from the top and of course the bottom and there is no fan. Now along with my Brod & Taylor baking steel it's been preheated to 220 degrees celsius or 430 degrees fahrenheit. Now this dough is going to bake covered for the first 20 minutes then I'm going to remove the baking shell and it's going to carry on baking for a further 25 minutes or so until I've got the right crust colour. That's it, now they just cool fully on the cooling rack. Now the crumb was one of the reasons that I wanted to tweak the hydration for this formula in the first place. For my specific flour blend dropping it down to 74% gave me a soft light crumb with perfectly balanced moisture that stays moist for a few days. Now Ed's recipe runs at 82% total hydration so I started there then I used Magnus to gradually bring it down over successive bakes until I hit the sweet spot for my flour. Now this works for my blend but it could well be different for yours. Adjusting hydration is one of the most common tweaks I make whether I'm designing my own formula or if I'm following somebody else's. What works perfectly for another baker might not suit my flour or what I'm shooting for so I never treat hydration as a target. It's more like a fine tuning mechanism. This is a fantastic country sourdough. Give it a whirl, let me know what you think.