Recipes Understood, Converted, and Screened
In response to hearing people ask recipe-related questions I have created a
chart that graphs all baked goods (cookies, cakes, muffins, etc) using three numbers. The chart is easy to understand There is some math behind it so I automated everything with a web application called Caked-Face Menace.
If you have any recipe-related questions; substitutions, conversions, hydrations, spotting bad recipes, what will adding an egg do to my recipe, etc.; the application was design to answer almost everything. It has taken about 3 weeks to complete; and it is still being tinkered with :)
I would like to hear some feedback, I heard from the artisan bakers, but I think someone say the word "cups" and got irked. I think this is a more appropraite forum for this post, but warning this application supports both grams and cups.
I have tried to make this very simple to understand and use. This is definitely a new way to think about baking.
cheers kids,
Michael O.
This is awesome. Very helpful and easy to understand.
Could you combine all the recipes in La Brea Bakery, Local Breads, and Bread and make a chart for the amounts of starter in each recipe (two chart, one with metric and one with imperial)?
[laughing at the horror of such a task!]
Imperial? yikes, "cups" in the application is for American cups. If someone asked me, I would extend the application to 8 ingredients so I could quickly analyze each recipe, but need to respect their copyrights and the effort it took to reate their recipes.
Hi Michael,
How do you convert from "moistness values" on your chart to percent hydration? They don't appear to be the same, at least for the breads I'm used to baking.
aloha,
Dave Hurd, Hilo, Hawaii
Hey Dave,
First hydration would only be valid for moistness values of around 0.35-0.45, almost everything else uses wet ingredients besides water.
The calculator calculates this for you, for 0.362, you would have 0.362*(236.6g/cup of water) divided by 1 cup*(grams/cups of bread flour).
You measure to obtain (grams/cups of bread flour).which may be 128g.
.362*236.6/128=0.669 or 66.9% hydration
Again the calculator calculates all this automatically
best,
Michael O.