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Weighing Salt

"Werner Gansz" <wwgansz@madriver.com>
Sat, 20 Sep 2003 12:04:16 -0400
v103.n041.11
In Joe Ortiz's "The Village Baker", he notes that salt inhibits the 
development of gluten by tightening the dough and making it less 
"extensible".  Peter Reinhart, in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" says that 
salt is a yeast inhibitor and can kill yeast when concentrated.  Whatever 
their respective reasons, both authors suggest using sea salt in bread and 
using special care to dissolve and distribute the salt..  Sea salt is 
evaporated salt "flakes" which dissolves more easily in water than 
crystallized table salt.  Ortiz adds sea salt to the dough very late in the 
mixing process, when all but last 20% of the flour has been added and the 
dough is in its final 5 minutes of (hand) kneading.  Adding crystallized 
salt at this stage could result in undissolved salt crystals in the dough.

I have been using sea salt for several years but have been getting 
inconsistent results.  I finally figured out why.  Not all sea salts are 
created equal, at least in terms of weight.  The local supermarkets don't 
always carry the same brands of sea salt all the time.  I started getting 
"salty" breads when I bought a new box of sea salt and finally bought a 
scale to find out what was going on.  My scale measures in 1/8 oz 
increments so I measured 10 level teaspoons of several salts to get a 
reasonably accurate measure of a teaspoon of salt.  Unfortunately by this 
time the original container from my "suspect" salt was gone so I don't know 
what it was, but it weighed exactly the same as Morton's Table Salt 
(crystals), explaining why my breads were too salty; the weight correction 
for sea salt from Reinhart's "BBA" didn't apply to this salt.  (I suspect 
that this unknown brand was just an overpriced table salt.

The table below is my current list of salts and their weights.  Also 
included is the salt content in a white bread such as baguettes based on a 
nominal 2% salt by weight.  If you use anything other than table salt it is 
worth getting a scale and adding your salt to the table.  I don't use the 
scale every time I bake because I now have the conversion from weight to 
volume but each new brand or texture of salt gets measured.  The Reese's 
Sea Salt (Fine) is about the same density as Kosher Salt (which is also 
evaporated). I would expect a "Coarse" sea salt to be even lighter.

King Arthur Bread Flour  4 3/8 oz/cup

Morton's Table Salt    .23 oz/tsp or .71 oz/Tb
Morton's Kosher Salt   .18 oz/tsp or .54 oz/Tb
Reese's Fine Sea Salt  .17 oz/tsp or .51 oz/Tb
Unknown "Sea" Salt     .23 oz/tsp

Nominal Salt content in White Bread (Baguettes, etc) @ 2% by weight

Salt Type             Per Cup of flour            3 Cup Batch
Table (Morton's)    .0875 oz  or  3/8 tsp    1/4 oz or 1 1/8 tsp
Kosher (Morton's)   .0875 oz  or  1/2 tsp    1/4 oz or 1 1/2 tsp
Fine Sea (Reese's)  .0875 oz  or  1/2 tsp    1/4 oz or 1 1/2 tsp