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I’ve written about the Merton Home Blend before but wanted to test out some new ideas regarding hydration (quantity of water as a ratio of total flour) and also dough handling during fermentation. I dropped the hydration down from 76% to 73% because recently I’ve produced a number of slack (kind of flaccid!) doughs that haven’t held their shape in the oven. I also treated the dough just a little more carefully during the folds in the early part of the bulk fermentation. And lastly — and I suspect most critically — I really pushed the bulk fermentation until the dough was light and airy.
