Adjusting Hydration for Our Elevation and Dry Air
Two facts drive everything in this lesson: we bake at about 4,600 feet here in American Fork, and our air runs dry most of the year. Nearly every recipe online was written somewhere else — usually near sea level, usually somewhere with real humidity. That difference matters more than most people expect, and it changes how your dough behaves compared to whatever blogger you're following.
The mechanism is simple. 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 on your counter here before it ever proofs right. My first real loaf proved it: it came out like a hockey puck, dense and gummy in the middle, and wouldn't rise. The cause turned out to be two things — water that was too cold, and our dry air crusting the surface before fermentation got going. Avoid repeating that.
What hydration percentage actually means
From the earlier lessons you already know I work in baker's percentages; it's just a load calc with wetter numbers. The rules:
- Flour is always 100 percent.
- Everything else — water, salt, starter — is a percentage of that flour weight.
So 75 percent hydration means 75 grams of water for every 100 grams of flour. Same kind of ratio as rise-over-run on stair stringers.
Most beginner sourdough recipes land 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 the ferment goes right.
Why I bump the water up here
For our climate I add 3 to 5 percent more water than a recipe calls for — especially in winter, when the furnace runs and indoor air is drier than outside. If a recipe says 70 percent, I mix closer to 74 or 75 percent.
That sounds like a small change on paper. It isn't small in your hands. The extra water buys time before the dough skins over, and it fights how fast our air steals moisture during bulk ferment.
One rule holds it all together: don't add water and walk away. Watch the dough, not a chart. Every bag of flour absorbs differently, and every house has different humidity depending on the day — whether you just ran a load of laundry, whether it's July or January. Add water in small splashes and feel the dough between additions: - Shaggy and tearing: it needs more. - Sliding off your hands like pancake batter: you went too far.
The lumber takeoff sheet story
I converted one of my early recipes to percentages on the back of a lumber takeoff sheet from my truck, because that's how my brain organizes numbers — grams of flour, grams of water, percent of this and that, scratched out and rewritten twice. Richard found it later and asked, straight-faced, if the deck was made of dough now. Still don't have a comeback.
The point stands for you too: write your percentages down somewhere you'll actually look again. It doesn't have to be fancy. A notecard on the fridge works.
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: wetter dough is genuinely harder to handle, especially for a beginner. It sticks to your hands and the counter and feels like it's fighting you. That's normal at higher hydration. Don't panic and dump in flour to fix it — you'll throw off your whole ratio. Wet hands, a dough scraper, and patience get you through better than more flour will.
My recommendation
While you're learning, I'd rather you slightly underhydrate than overhydrate. A stiffer, slightly denser dough is still good bread. A dough so wet you can't shape it turns into a gummy mess on the counter, and that's discouraging in a way that isn't worth it yet. Get comfortable at 70 to 72 percent before you chase 80.
Before next time
Weigh out flour and water for your next bake, add the 3 to 5 percent bump, and watch how the dough feels at minute five of mixing versus minute fifteen. Write down what you notice. That's the whole assignment.