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Interesting Melissa. It looks to me like the higher hydration dough was slightly overproofed, given the way the scores opened. It would be interesting to repeat the experiment with equal amounts of fermentation, although this would be tricky. Perhaps with aliquot jars it could be doable. Thanks for sharing. 
This was so interesting. Thanks! I think I have been using too high hydration. Next time I will cut it back and see the difference.
Very interesting! I’ve been playing around with having a more open crumb in my sourdough, so the high hydration might be fun.
I am curious if you used the sourdough starter right from the fridge, or pre-mixed at a 30-35-35 ratio and let double/triple first.
@mcw.mark I think both loaves were on the “over” side of the fermentation spectrum, but indeed the high hydration dough can’t handle that as well, especially if there’s no gluten development to strengthen the dough.
@bwynn It’ll be interesting to see how your hydration change turns out.
@mormankristy It was starter from the fridge but it had been fed and ripened just a couple days before. My flours were just milled and probably 110°F though, so I think the dough still moved fast, a bulk time of about 5 hours for the high hydration and 6 hours for the low hydration.
I found this interesting. Particularly since I think of 82-83% as “high hydration” for my own techniques. Of course it depends on flour type, and I rarely (never) use 100% WW flour. My typical bake is 30% WW flour and 73ish % hydration. I’m quite happy there.
It is very hard to get white Sonora wheat berries here in Canada. What other grains would you replace it with, if any ? Thank you
Great experiment! I have settled on a 64.5% hydration, excluding the hydration of the stiff starter I use, and get wonderful results repeatedly. I do bump up the hydration a touch when baking with whole wheat or rye flours. The amount of openness in my crumb can be altered with the amount of bulk fermentation time to a degree. I do get a thicker tougher crust as your experiment showed and would like to improve on that a bit. I may raise my hydration a small amount to see if that makes a difference as it should per your test results. Thank you for sharing and for your efforts.
@kagy My dough hydration is also usually the 70s when I’m only using 30% whole wheat flour.
@Lambert Hard white spring wheat berries are a substitute with a little more gluten strength and thirst. Kamut/khorasan wheat berries would be about the same gluten strength and more thirst.
@Jeff_Howland I’m curious to hear if more water also gives you a thinner crust.
Wow, that’s almost pizza hydration! Quite low for the sourdough world, But why not? Pizza can have an airy crust, too. Perhaps I’ll try lowering my hydration a bit and see what happens. At the very least, the dough will certainly be easier to handle!
Without flour mill I have always used flour, rather than wheat berries. No place for yet another kitchen tool! That said, I live in an area where I can easily get Sonoran wheat flours, both white and whole wheat, but not white whole wheat. For that, I depend on Bob’s Red Mill.
I’ve adapted Lahey’s No Knead formula for my sourdough
Excellent post and great experiment . I am intrigued as the lower hydration loaf created higher oven spring which in my experience means a more opened crumb. Nevertheless , you noted and attached picture showing that the high hydration loaf created a more opened crumb… just want to verify that as it is counter intuitive.
I see what you’re saying, that oven spring should translate to internal expansion aka open crumb.
In this case though, the low hydration bread baked up taller but also smaller overall, more abrupt opening of the score in an upward direction.
The high hydration, in contrast, baked up bigger on the horizontal, a “frisbee,” and the score was oozing open even before it got into the oven.