I apologise in advance for the 33 mentions of the word hydration that follows

A guide on experimenting with different dough hydration

Howdy y’all

I was recently thinking back to when I first started the no regretti spaghetti Instagram account, and woweee has it been a journey! When I first started, I was really only using it as a means to control the Insta algorithm to exclusively show me pasta related content. It was a space to find inspiration, learn new things and occasionally share my own pasta creations. Here I am three years on, with a stunnin’ community of like-minded pasta lovers, sharing my recipes, my learnings and everything else. While I didn’t set out specifically to do this, it has fulfilled a lifelong and secret dream that I had pushed to the back of my mind, never really believing there was space for me to share my love of food in this world. Not to get emotional, but I have a lot of gratitude.

This wee walk down memory lane did also get me thinking about what really pushed my interest in pasta making in the first place. And that was the dough. The pasta itself. It might sound odd, but when it comes to pasta it’s the element of making dough from scratch and using my hands to create intricate shapes over the sauce itself. The sauce is kind of just a means to eat the shape, IMO.

All of that reminiscing got me feeling inspired to focus on the pasta, so today’s newsletter is not a new sauce and shape pairing, but rather a mini guide into one aspect of pasta making that I have really enjoyed experimenting with: dough hydration.

Top to bottom: 50% - 45% - 40% hydration dough

Let’s start with the obvious point: what is dough hydration?