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