April 4, 2011 - 1:03pm
baker's percentage question in <artisan baking>
i understood the baker's percentage, but i was confused with "eventually %".
how does it work? i saw it in the book <artisan baking across america>.
SCRAP DOUGH
instant yeast (eventually 0.5%)
water (eventually 65%)
flour 100%
salt 2%
POOLISH
instant yeast (eventually 0.07%)
flour 100%----------150grams
water (eventually 110%)--------------135grams how was it calculated?
THE DOUGH
flour 100%
instant yeast 0.2%
water 53%
fermented poolish 93%
fermented scrap dough 55%
salt 2.7%
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http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/baker039s-math
If you lose this link, just remember to use the "handbook" tab from the links at the top of the pages here.
Choose, "basics" and work your way to "Baker's Math".
Good luck.
thx, but i didn't find my answer. i m looking for something about the eventually%
Sorry, I now realize you are asking about something quite specific.
Not familiar with the book.
"eventually %"
Well I admit that I for one don't understand the question (maybe it's "obvious" ...but not to me:-). Can you supply a little context (like a whole recipe or a paragraph or whatever's relevant) where you saw this "eventually %"?
SCRAP DOUGH
instant yeast (eventually 0.5%)
water (eventually 65%)
flour 100%
salt 2%
POOLISH
instant yeast (eventually 0.07%)
flour 100%----------150grams
water (eventually 110%)--------------135grams how was it calculated?
THE DOUGH
flour 100%
instant yeast 0.2%
water 53%
fermented poolish 93%
fermented scrap dough 55%
salt 2.7%
With a recipe in parts (for example, poolish and dough), there's always a question of whether the bakers percentages should be relative to the amount of flour in that part or to the total amount of flour. Since both numbers may be useful and since neither one is clearly more right than the other, recipes often give both.
To make it clear what's what, this recipe seems to use the word "eventually" to mean that particular percentage is relative to the total amount of flour.(Of course my guess could be totally wrong - see the next post for a different view.)
In this recipe, the calculation of how much water to put in the poolish is so complex I won't even attempt to replicate the recipe's calculation. The general problem of figuring out bakers percentages for recipes made in parts is something that most folks (math-challenged and otherwise) "outsource" to either the recipe or a spreadsheet.
In general, bakers percentages give you the information you need to measure easily and to easily scale a recipe up or down. This particular recipe though -despite seeming to use bakers percentages- does not in a clear way contain enough information to scale the recipe up or down easily. I'd suggest picking a more straightforward example recipe rather than trying to make sense of this one.
(Further, I suspect another part of the reason this doesn't seem to make sense is there's also a typo somewhere. "110%" hydration just doesn't seem reasonable: it's clearly way too high for the total dough, and it isn't consistent with 135 grams of water to 150 grams of flour for the poolish either.)
I know exactly what you're talking about - Maggie Glezer uses the "eventually" quantities a lot in her formulas, which can be pretty confusing at first. Read the directions. She has you combine certain amounts of yeast and water to achieve a particular low concentration of yeast solution (I suspect this is necessary because in a larger-scale bakery, they use proportionally far less yeast. For a scaled-down home recipe, this tiny quantity would be impossible to measure accurately). If you read the directions, you see that you don't end up using all of the yeast and water that you mix together, so the percentage is not calculated based on the quantities in the chart. "Eventually" means that you'll mix together the amount of water and yeast listed in the chart, but you'll only use part of it in the actual dough.
yep u r right. but i m still trying to convert it to the exactly baker's percentage.
i wanna share her recipes to my friends in China who don't use the volume(teaspoon or cup) at all.
how can i make it into metric?
I personally would find it hard to either scale this recipe up or down, or to communicate it to someone else, because an important question doesn't seem to be answered. That is: how much of each of the "fermented poolish" and "fermented scrap dough" do you need to make to match the size of the final dough? It would seem awfully easy to either make too little (the disaster would strike only when you tried to mix the final dough) or way too much (not a disaster exactly, but problematic anyway).
That said, here's my best guess of how to do it:
The "scrap dough" part is already in all bakers percentages that seem to make sense. I'd just omit the confusing word "eventually", and I'd leave it up to the recipient to figure out how to measure tiny amounts when necessary (pocket scales or digital spoons with a resolution of one tenth of a gram are one possible solution, one which your friends may already have).
The "the dough" part also is already in all bakers percentages that seem to make sense. (I can't figure out how to scale the amount of "scrap dough" relative to the amount of "the dough" ...but that doesn't seem to be a bakers percentage problem.)
The only problematic area is the "poolish" part, and there's only one problematic ingredient even there. All the existing bakers percentages (just omit the word "eventual") seem to make sense except the one for the water (which seems somehow garbled or nonsensical). Assuming the gram weights in this area of the recipe are right, I'd just plain replace the percentage of water in the poolish with "90%" ((135 grams water)/(150 grams flour)).
Finally, I'd omit the occasional/inconsistent references to "grams" because they only seem to add confusion and seem to suggest a specific scale for some parts but not for others, and specify everything only in bakers percentages and only relative to the amount of flour in that part (i.e. nothing relative to "total" flour).
(Or, maybe don't even try to communicate this, but instead get a different recipe book with clearer recipes:-)
thank you very much. i ll try 90%. maybe it works
any other clearly book about baguette recommend?
Instead of a book, do a search on TFL for "Saturday Baguettes", a series of notes on individual bakes of baguettes done by Ryan, one of the contributors. The notes are well written and easy to understand, and explain ingredients and step by step methods used, with no confusing "baker's math." I am sure you and your friends will enjoy the notes and the baguettes.
By the way, that "recipe" with the baker's math percentages was not as clear as it might have been. You have to start backwards with the poolish (at 150 g flour and 135 g water for a total of 285 g. Perhaps 286 if you add something for the yeast. Now realize that that equals 93% ofthe final dough in baker's math percentages. The scrap dough equates to 55%, for 169 g, comprised of flour and water, yeast and salt, and you can determine their weights based on the percentages listed. So the additional flour in the final dough should be 307 g. You can quickly figure the rest out. It is just not written very clearly. Have fun.
Bob
thx a lot.