Adjusting Hydration for Our Elevation and Dry Air
Okay. This is the lesson where I get on my soapbox a little, so bear with me.
Every recipe you find online was written somewhere. Usually somewhere near sea level, usually somewhere with actual humidity in the air. That matters more than people think. We're sitting up around 4,600 feet here in American Fork, our air is dry most of the year, and that changes how your dough behaves compared to whatever blogger wrote the recipe you're following.
Here's the short version: dry air pulls moisture out of your dough while it sits. A dough that would be perfectly workable in Austin or Seattle can crust over and stiffen up on your counter here before it's even had a chance to proof right. I learned this one the hard way with my first real loaf — came out looking like a hockey puck, dense gummy middle, wouldn't rise worth anything. Took me a while to figure out the water was too cold and our air had already started crusting the dough before it got going. That one's on me, but I don't want you repeating it.
What hydration percentage actually means
If you've done the earlier lessons you already know I think in baker's percentages, because it's just a load calc with wetter numbers. Flour is always 100 percent, and everything else — water, salt, starter — gets a percentage of that flour weight.
So a 75 percent hydration dough means: for every 100 grams of flour, you've got 75 grams of water. Simple ratio, same as figuring rise-over-run for stair stringers. Once it clicks, it clicks for good.
Most beginner sourdough recipes land somewhere between 65 and 80 percent hydration. Lower number, stiffer dough, easier to handle, denser crumb. Higher number, wetter dough, harder to handle, more open airy crumb if you get the ferment right.
Why I bump the water up here
For our climate I usually add 3 to 5 percent more water than a recipe calls for, especially in winter when the furnace is running and the air inside the house is even drier than outside. If a recipe says 70 percent, I'm mixing closer to 74 or 75 percent.
I know that sounds like a small adjustment. It isn't small once you feel it in your hands. That little bit of extra water buys you time before the dough skins over, and it fights back against how fast our air wants to steal moisture during bulk ferment.
But — and this is important — don't just add water and walk away. Watch the dough, not a chart. Every bag of flour absorbs a little differently, every house has different humidity depending on the day, whether you just ran a load of laundry, whether it's July or January. I add water in small splashes and feel the dough between additions. If it's shaggy and tearing, it needs more. If it's sliding off your hands like pancake batter, you went too far.
The lumber takeoff sheet story
I actually converted one of my early recipes to percentages on the back of a lumber takeoff sheet I had sitting in my truck, because that's just how my brain organizes numbers. Grams of flour, grams of water, percent of this, percent of that, scratched out and rewritten twice. Richard found it weeks later going through the truck for something else and asked me straight-faced if the deck was made of dough now. I still don't have a good comeback for that one.
But that's genuinely how I'd recommend you think about it too. Write your percentages down somewhere you'll actually look at them again. Doesn't have to be fancy. A notecard on the fridge works fine.
How to make the adjustment step by step
- Start with your recipe's stated hydration percentage.
- Add 3 to 5 percent more water to your total liquid weight. On a 500 gram flour recipe at 70 percent hydration, that's roughly 15 to 25 extra grams of water.
- Hold back about 10 percent of that extra water at first. Add it in small splashes during mixing, not all at once.
- Feel the dough. It should be tacky, not so wet it won't hold any shape at all.
- Note what you did on your recipe card so next time you're not guessing from scratch.
A caution here: wetter dough is genuinely harder to handle, especially for a beginner. It sticks to your hands, sticks to the counter, feels like it's fighting you. That's normal at higher hydration. Don't panic and dump in a bunch of flour to fix it, you'll throw off your whole ratio. Wet hands, a dough scraper, and patience get you through it better than more flour will.
My honest opinion on this
I'd rather you slightly underhydrate than overhydrate while you're still learning. A stiffer dough that's a little denser is still good bread. A dough so wet you can't shape it turns into a gummy mess on your counter, and that's discouraging for a beginner in a way that isn't worth it yet. Get comfortable at 70 to 72 percent before you go chasing 80.
Before next time
Weigh out your flour and water for your next bake, add that 3 to 5 percent bump, and pay attention to how the dough feels at minute five of mixing versus minute fifteen. Write down what you notice. That's the whole assignment.