TangZhong and 75% Hydration: Fact or Myth?

[@blchen1]

I have zero experience in baking bread , but as a physics PhD, I do appreciate and admire the approach you took towards the problem, not to mention the crystal-clear and logical presentation! Bravo! Happy New Year! 🎉

[@NovitaListyani]

Glad you enjoyed it! Speaking of physics, we admire Feynman and collect many of his books :) Young Seraphine on the pleasure of reading Feynman's books: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnPSgXV8baZ6aNE

[@michaelprozonic]

I first learned about tangzhong while assisting my 9yo grand daughter with her baking club that taught them to make baked goods from different countries. I have been working on perfecting my pizza dough for about 15 years now and have only recently started baking breads and rolls. A video from You-Tuber Chain Baker showed me the comparison between tangzhong and yudane which eventually led me to your channel. I love your scientific methods, explanations and research. I am now starting to work with yudane only because of the many possible sources for error when making tangzhong. I preheat my mixing bowl and measuring cup to minimize cooling the boiling water for the yudane. Thank you for your hard work

[@NovitaListyani]

So glad to read your comment, thank you!

[@asderven]

Thank you for the video. I haven’t seen it yet 🙈. You answered the question in the description. I read the comments, everyone is mentioning King Arthur article. I stopped reading articles written by people a long time ago. I usually only read academic articles on the subject, bread has sooooo many academic papers. Or I ask fellow bakers about the problems they had, their solutions, and I see if it is worth it. When I started baking sourdough in 2018, I asked around how people made wholewheat bread. Most of the bakers put 20% wholewheat and used bread flour for the rest. I was like, just call it regular bread, stop calling them wholewheat, it is confusing. Only a few admitted that they baked with 100% wholewheat flour, and of those few, a very small percentage know what they are doing. Most people just follow things, without understanding the science, reasons and the logic behind things. Thank you for making videos that clarify these topics, lots of people will learn from your videos.

[@MrElosobear]

I am new to making dough and first search result is King Arthur. Tried the 75% and dough is so sticky and unworkable..I had to add tons of flour. Glad I found your channel.

[@kitwong4033]

I wish I had watched your 2 videos before I converted my Challah bread recipe with Tangzhong according to the King Arthur paper you were referring to. The added water made the dough look just like your video. I added more flour to form a dough. However, the 3 braids loaf looks like a giant Pepperidge farm gold fish. It was so difficult to work with. At least it came out soft and tasted good. I hate to waste food.

[@NovitaListyani]

Sorry to hear that. Next attempt will definitely be better :)

[@summerbreeze6240]

Any ideas why your videos won't upload to my drive or save to utube? Iam ne ding to listen several times to your great info and can't find favorite videos on your account page. Help!

[@donaldjenner489]

Were I but twenty minutes younger (...), I'd undoubtedly fall in love. Clearly, that whole business thing which preceded your shift to bread making videos will be useful background when you kand your colleague?...) open a bakery & cooking school. Do it where I live and you'll have no competition. Whatever. You sound like a teacher (been there; done that), and a first rate researcher. I'm completely blown away.

[@NovitaListyani]

Wow, thank you! That's very nice of you, really appreciate your kind comment.

[@agentlx7536]

I wish I had seen this video sooner. I've been trying to bake with Tangzhong and I was going by the exact article by King Arthur and I was always dealing with a goopy mess from too much water in my dough! 😔

[@tomwood5896]

Same for me, I tried using the method mentioned in that article yesterday and got a wet sticky mess. Found this video when trying to figure out what went wrong!

[@azwarriorm2617]

I REALLY love your explanations . Thank you

[@NovitaListyani]

🙏 thanks!

[@HannibalJV]

Thank for the information, I enjoy the videos and they're helping me level up by bread baking 😊

[@B10COURT]

Thank you for doing all the research! I had 2 failed 1:5 attempts with my Massa Sovada recipe. Thinking I had done something incorrectly. You have a wonderful teaching style! Thank You!

[@NovitaListyani]

Thanks for watching 🙏

[@robertzoufood]

I have been stressing out as I really wanted to convert a challah recipe with a fairly low hydration level to tangzhong/yudane (as I am giving it to my relatives abroad and don't want the bread drying out quick). It only had a 53% hydration level and it seemed absurd to convert it to 75% (as shown on this King Arthur Website) when I add tangzhong. I also saw another recipe on challah that does contain tangzhong in it with a hydration level of just over 60%. I didn't know what to do until I saw this video and the one on tangzhong and 1:5 ratio being wrong.

[@NovitaListyani]

glad it was helpful! Thanks for sharing.

[@juanmazapan9044]

Nice to see you again ,happy new year

[@NovitaListyani]

Happy new year!

[@CARLOSJUSTINIANO-hf7qe]

ok! now I can see, thank you Sheraphine, brilliant!!!🙂

[@hj8607]

No gelatin retains any more water than amount needed to make it gel. A Yudane is such a gel. Tang Zhong is a gel slurry. You are right that in prep of Tang Zhong the other KZbin cooked off a lot of the water. That is the reason more water was needed for final dough and the hydration likely was actually 60% at most.(in that the Tang Zhong was only 1:3 (or less) after overcooking)

[@NovitaListyani]

Indeed, thanks for the comment.

[@chopsddy3]

To me, that article seemed to show an experiment that had a specific ,pre determined result in mind. It also seems written by someone with a lot of stored opinions and little experience. In other words, it was bs. Once the principle functions and potentials of a mixture of flour and water are known , the possible applications and procedures are nearly infinite. The “right” way is the one that works in a certain environment under certain conditions at a certain point in time, that gives the desired results. The principles for both methods are the same . I’ve been thinking in terms of a starting point. being gravy , ascending through levels of sauces and pudding to bread additive. I don’t believe that one method is inferior or superior of the other. One’s choice is dependent upon one’s situation. Seraphina, when your ready to write a book, rest assured I’ll buy it.( I hope I didn’t misspell your name)

[@NovitaListyani]

Thanks, Seraphine is the name :) thank you for your comment, this method is indeed very simple, it's unfortunate that so many make it into something so complicated.

[@chopsddy3]

@@NovitaListyani Thank you for the correction “Seraphine”. You have Helped my understanding dramatically through your research. Your one of the best truth seekers , and presenters of your findings, I’ve ever found.

[@Melodycima]

When you say 1:2 ratio. Do you include counting the water mix with tanzhong + water used on the main flour? And does this also include the milk in computing the 1:2?

[@vittoriabakes]

I love the explanation, thank you for your videos. One question I have: What would be the difference in the outcome if using 10% of the flour vs. 30% of the flour for the yudane?

[@NovitaListyani]

Great question! We are actually in the process of making a video on this subject, basically the more flour you use for Tangzhong/Yudane, you get better shelf life, and more of that natural saccharide sweetness, and softness but the specific volume suffers, yet done right, it's actually not that much.

[@AJAA2916]

@@NovitaListyani thanks!

[@EmadFayek16]

your video is is good , very clear , evidence based and scientific... finally for a very unexperienced home baking person like me, your conclusion is very simple process for me to follow ...can't thank you enough. one question in the final step what is better (unless it does not matter) should I add the yudane (which will be cold) to the warm water and yeast step and then add the flour to make bread or should I first mix the flour water and yeast make a dough and then add to it the yudane ?

[@NovitaListyani]

We always add Yudane first when making our final dough, if you live in a colder environment, you may want to leave the Yudane on the counter until it gets to room temperature, of course, this comes after the Yudane has been stored in the fridge overnight. Here is an example of the whole process: kzbin.info/www/bejne/p5WyeaCaibmmaJY

[@EmadFayek16]

Thank you so much , this is very helpful 🫶

[@cookingwiththeword5300]

i want to make pretzels using tangzhong. would you have any ideas on how to do it

[@NovitaListyani]

not at the moment, will do that someday, we love pretzels too :)

[@MereZen]

I'll have to try the experiment to see what I get, my guess is that I'll be able to produce a result much lighter than loaf B. I believe in the science of tangzhong

[@NovitaListyani]

Most likely so, if you make your Tangzhong right and knead your dough well :)

[@AJAA2916]

Guess I'll reduce my total dough hydration from 75% to elsewhere that is convenient, because it is exactly as you said, it's like a flip of coin, sometimes your bread turn out great, sometimes it's not; super sticky. Normally my dough requires 12 minutes of mixing after autolyse, but if something happen like the current batch of flour have more moisture than usual, it would take up to 20 minutes of mixing. Any suggestion for how much should I reduce the hydration? Maybe by 5%? Your video is great, don't get me wrong, but I truly believe that the higher the dough hydration, the dough will become more moist and last longer despite the yudane/tangzhong controversy that's had been made by KA.

[@NovitaListyani]

I believe you may have misunderstood the video, in the video, what we're addressing is the erroneous advice telling people to raise the hydration of a recipe to 75% when converting into a tangzhong recipe. So, if your original recipe is 75%, when converting to Tangzhong recipe, you should just keep it that way. Using Tangzhong/Yudane allows you to raise the hydration of your dough, but the amount of the hydration percentage that you can raise is correlated to the percentage of flour that you use for the Tangzhong/Yudane . In that article, the author used only 5-10% of the total flour for Tangzhong, in this video we indicated that the raise in the percentage of hydration should be less than 2%, watch 10:51. Thus if the hydration in the original recipe is 65%, you can go as high as 66.9%. By arbitrary raising it to 75% like the article suggested is definitely incorrect. As for your situation, if you are converting an original recipe that calls for 75% hydration, with a Tangzhong recipe that uses 5-10%, you can still raise the hydration to about 77%. If adding Tangzhong causes the dough to become too sticky, most likely your problem is in overmixing. Tangzhong/Yudane has a lower tolerance to overmixing, so you need to be careful with kneading.

[@AJAA2916]

@@NovitaListyani thank you Seraphim!

[@maulanailham998]

Great video! I would like to ask, what is the reason for keeping tangzhong in the fridge overnight to retrogade?

[@sunflowerhk100]

I made a yudane with 1 part flour and 2 parts water, the mix in the end was too dry and couldn't mix well with the flour.

[@ray_99]

Commenting for the algorithm : )

[@NovitaListyani]

😂🙏🙏🙏🙏😀

[@AJAA2916]

12:41 you said to mix tangzhong/yudane into the final dough, so my dough have to pass windowpane test first before I add tangzhong/yudane? Please shed some light, thanks!

[@NovitaListyani]

No, final dough refers to the last dough, you mix in the Tangzhong along with other ingredients.

[@jackscully4686]

I really appreciate the work you are doing bringing scientific literature on baking to youtube. I think your videos would benefit from a direct demonstration, especially with such harsh criticism of others. Don't worry about sample size, it's just a demonstration.

[@NovitaListyani]

It's not like we're against doing a demonstration, up until a few months ago, the Tangzhong 1:5 was the standard approach for us when it came to making gelatinized starch for bread baking, we have done so many breads using this 1:5 Tangzhong, it should be fair to say that we know exactly how it goes. Any demonstration we do, will be subjectively based on our own experiences, as we mentioned in the video, mostly positive. In our humble judgement, throwing in another subjective demonstration will only lead to a circus of he said she said, so, in this video we've chosen to put the spotlight on subjectivity against objectivity, by presenting the comparison between the two, our viewers can then make informed subjective judgements. If what we said in this video is considered as harsh criticism, well, it's up to the company to evaluate. I believe a reputable company can't just simply put up an article without having experts examine the facts in the article. In this case, as we showed in the video, it can be easily demonstrated to be a misleading conclusion.

[@jackscully4686]

@@NovitaListyani you're postulating that evaporation explains the low volume of loaf 2, and that 2:1 scald "traps" the same water as 5:1 scald. You may be correct, but don't have direct objective evidence of this. You have the evidence that gelatinization is complete with 2:1 ratio from the paper, but maybe cooking more water with the starch still traps more water, even if the starch itself is technically already gelatinized. Maybe there's another molecule (proteins for example) that traps water that no one has noticed. A simple demonstration/experiment IS objective, not subject, even if the experimental design is flawed and doesn't use statistical methods to quantify certainty. Also, demonstrations are more entertaining KZbin videos. See the ChainBaker channel for an example.

[@NovitaListyani]

If you are curious about the mechanism and process of starch gelatinization, the core of Tangzhong/Yudane, you may want to watch our previous video on the subject kzbin.info/www/bejne/lZ6pipifgd9_ptE We cover, in depth, starch gelatinization, the history and the scientific facts about Tangzhong/Yudane and show that both are essential the same. As for the entertainment value of our channel, we believe every channel is entitled to their own style, thanks for the suggestion though :)

[@fredbrown7954]

Thank you. Nice job 👏

[@NovitaListyani]

Thank you too!

[@mikefesik3307]

I'm very confused about one thing you say in the video. It's when you are talking about how the bread dough will become a sloppy mess when you add tangzhong and THEN increase the hydration to 75%. But this is not what the King Arthur article says to do! The article states to increase the hydration of a bread dough recipe to 75% BEFORE removing the ingredients to make the tangzhong. I don't think a sloppy mess would result if this was done. Please explain.

[@MrElosobear]

Yes increase water and it made my dough unworkable. King Arthur sucks!

[@adamscisse7050]

Merci infiniment pour vos vidéos très instructives.. Si vous pouviez mettre un traducteur pour permettre à nous qui avons un peu de mal en anglais de comprendre beaucoup plus facilement les messages. Ça nous fera énormément de bien...Merci d'avance

[@NovitaListyani]

Nous ferons de notre mieux pour le traduire en français dès que possible. Merci pour votre commentaire.

[@SergioGonzalezMartin]

Hello! Very interesting information. But, I can't understand why do you use yudane, if at the end you use the same amount of water compared to a plain bread. I asume that at least part of the gelatinized water must be used to increase rhe water content of the dough, while keeping rhe mechanical properties of the dough.

[@NovitaListyani]

The fact that a dough with tangzhong can tolerate a higher percentage of hydration doesn't mean that you have to raise the hydration. Besides all the many benefits of using tangzhong, raising the hydration can still end up diluting or changing the flavors, so it depends on what you're using the tangzhong for, if you're using it as an improver though, like how we did here kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4OZY4V3g6uaarM, the adding more water can compensate for a longer baking time. For more information on Tangzhong you may also want to watch this kzbin.info/www/bejne/haGuYnabjJ6ro5o

[@USA-CANADA1480]

So from this I am taking that, we can just take 10% of flour from the original recipe, double that amount for the liquid (from 1:2 ratio of Flour:Liquid) and just follow the baking procedure as normal....?

[@NovitaListyani]

Yes, correct! Don't forget to deduct the amount of flour and liquid used for tangzhong from the original recipe. Once you are familiar with it, try 20% flour for tangzhong.

[@AJAA2916]

For a 200g flour, can I use 240g boiled water to make Yudane instead of 1:2 ratio?

[@NovitaListyani]

Sure, why not, even 1:1 is okay.

[@AJAA2916]

@@NovitaListyani Thank you!!!!

[@jeremyvolland8508]

Umm... Who bakes bread in a pan so deep? If anything, B looks like a normal loaf. This looks like a sraged photo to me. I am no expert, but my guess is that if B was actually smaller then the other two, it was probably by too small of an amount to see in a side by side photo, so they decided to help their readers see the difference.

[@csraymondwong]

Can I use the Tangzhong on the Chinese steam bun?

[@iewigono]

I already tried that. And base on mine, the answer is no. The bun or bao become too chewy and unpleasant texture. Use 15gr of corn flour or maizena every 300gr of flour is the best for me.

[@AJAA2916]

@@iewigono is this corn flour/maizena also applicable to other bread? perhaps when making donuts? What do we get when we add it? Improved texture or more moist? Thank you!

[@iewigono]

Never tried it on doughnut. In chinese bao is to improve texture and prevent the bao shrinking when open the steamer lid.

[@zdrumrguy]

I followed the King Arthur article and the bread came out great. I didnt know about the retrogradation step. I didnt add any flour, even though i really wanted to. I just had to knead the dough by hand a little longer. Everyone commented how soft and tasty the rolls were. A little patience is all it needed. It's only food 👍

[@deanweaver4469]

Thank you 👋🤠🙏

[@bettafishbreeding]

Hi novita salam breeding betta fish

[@NovitaListyani]

Salam juga!

[@בלבלון]

Hello. Why is there no Hebrew translation in your interesting videos?

[@NovitaListyani]

I am not so sure we are capable of translating it into Hebrew at the moment, is there auto-translation feature in KZbin for Hebrew?

[@AustinBrister]

Wait, so Seraphine posts to Novita’s channel? Very confusing

[@NovitaListyani]

Ever since the first video of this channel 8 years ago: kzbin.info/www/bejne/goPPp5SgidmUars.

[@frankfurter7260]

Why would I listen to you over King Arthur? Who are you? What is your background in bread making (training, experience)? Rolling your eyes and throwing up a bunch of studies that most including me are not competent to evaluate or interpret independently is woefully insufficient to defer to you over King Arthur. It’s ridiculous.

[@MalcolmSalmond]

Thanks for this. I'm so glad I found your channel. Btw, you are hilarious.

[@NovitaListyani]

Thanks for watching!