How Water Hardness Affects Your Cooking
American · Organized from the video by Adam Ragusea
Official YouTube player — views and revenue go to the creator.
Ingredients
Tap an ingredient to mark it ready.
Steps
Tap a timecode to jump the video there — the current step is highlighted while it plays.
- 1
In two separate bowls, combine 1/2 tsp yeast with 1/2 cup water (one bowl with soft water, one with hard water) and let bloom.
💡 The hard water bowl contains roughly 150 ppm calcium and magnesium.
- 2
Add 1/2 tsp salt to each bowl and stir in 150 g of flour until a wet, sticky dough forms.
💡 The hard water dough may feel more gluten-y, stretchy, and elastic.
- 3
Cover the doughs with a damp towel for a 15-minute autolysis step, then give both a quick knead.
💡 Autolysis makes kneading easier.
- 4
Let the doughs rise for a couple of hours, then fold them over themselves a few times to incorporate.
💡 Wet your hands to prevent the sticky dough from sticking to you.
- 5
Place the doughs on parchment paper inside a Dutch oven and let them proof for a half hour.
💡 The hard water dough is on the right in the video.
- 6
Score the top of the dough with scissors, cover the Dutch oven to retain steam, and bake at 400°F.
💡 Scoring helps the bread to puff up more in the oven.
🔥 steam · 400°F
- 7
After about 30 minutes of baking, remove the lid to let the outside brown until the bread sounds hollow when tapped.
💡 The hard water bread might be more chewy or have a slightly different texture due to reinforced gluten.
⏱ 30 minutes
Tips
- Hard water can slow down the cooking of vegetables because calcium ions cross-link with pectin to reinforce plant cell structures.
- In bread, calcium can reinforce the gluten structure, making dough more elastic, though extremely hard water can make it too rigid to expand.
- For coffee, moderately hard water can help dissolve flavor compounds more effectively than soft water.
- To clean mineral scale from appliances, use white distilled vinegar or a 1:1 mixture of vinegar and water.
This recipe was organized from the source video's transcript. Amounts follow what the video presents. Source: Adam Ragusea on YouTube