Smart Monday: Hydration

What the hydration percentage means and how to put it into perspective

Recently I’ve seen a lot of content creators on instagram post loaves that they name after their hydration as if saying “75% hydration sourdough” tells you anything specific or important about the bread they are making. Well here’s a reality check for you, IT DOES NOT. The amount of water you use tells you nothing but that, the amount of water you used and that’s nothing I’d ever use to describe a bread I’m offering, because how much water you use is relative to literally EVERYTHING. It’s relative to the flour, humidity, your starter hydration, the amount of salt you are using, the room temperature and even how high up or in what climate you live in the world. The hydration of your loaf is literally the least precise thing to name or define a bread after. It’s also nothing to simply copy if you see a recipe.

I’ve written about hydration before but I want to get back into it as it seems like something people often obsess about and have a lot of wrong knowledge and understanding of. Water is usually the second biggest ingredient of your dough and while it mostly defines how your gluten will develop and hence what structure your dough will have it also affects how your bread ferments and will look and you should be really careful about aiming for a specific hydration just because someone else is using it. Only if you live in the same place and use the exact same ingredients you can safely assume that this might be the right hydration for you too or that at least you’ll get a somewhat similar result.

But what is the right hydration you might ask?