Why does nobody talk about how much humidity messes up your dough?

I was having trouble with my sourdough sticking like crazy last week. Checked my thermometer, oven temp was fine. Then I grabbed a cheap humidity gauge from the hardware store in Portland and it was reading 78% in my kitchen. No wonder my dough was a sticky mess. I had to drop my hydration by like 10% to get it workable again. Has anyone else had to adjust their recipe just because of the weather?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas97222h ago

Funny you mention Portland humidity. My cousin lives out in the burbs there and he told me his starter went totally dormant during that weird rainy stretch in July. Had to feed it twice a day just to keep it alive. Meanwhile I'm down in the desert and I have to add extra ice cubes to my dough to keep it from drying out during bulk fermentation. It's wild how much the air itself changes the game.

emmar7521h ago

Counterpoint - desert baking is actually way easier to control. You can add moisture back in with ice cubes or a spray bottle real easy. But once your dough gets too wet in that Portland soup air, you're stuck dealing with slack, sticky mess that won't hold shape no matter what you do. I'd rather have my bulk ferment a little slow and dry than fight a spongy dough that's fermenting way too fast. Plus you get that nice crust development in dry air, that paper thin crackle. Your cousin sounds like he's fighting the environment instead of working with it.