Can Someone Explain the BBGA Soaker Table
Can Someone Explain the BBGA Soaker Table? Have am in the process of making a spreadsheet to calculate dough. I want to set it up according the BBGA standards, but I am unclear as to how the Soaker table is calculated. The BBGA has a published pdf file on their website indicating the methods of calculating dough. See this link.
https://www.bbga.org/files/2009FormulaFormattingSINGLES.pdf
On page 5, diagrams 3 and 4 they show how they want it setup. In the diagrams you'll notice that "Soaker Water" is shown as a separate ingredient. Unfortunately they only showed a single dry ingredient, "Cracked Rye". It is my understanding that "ALL DRY INGREDIENTS", except salt used in a soaker is to be calculated as 100%. I think this calculation is similar to 100% flour in other dough calculations. So, if a soaker contained 25% @ 25g cracked wheat, 25% @ 25g oats, 25% @ 25g sesame seed, 25% @ 25g flaxseeds, and 100g soaker water, the 100g of total dry ingredients would = 100% and the soaker water would = 100%. Also each of the seeds, wheat and oats would be shown as 25% ( a combined total of 100%) in the Soaker Table.
If the standards are to be followed should the Soaker Water be shown as a separate ingredient in the Total Formula? Hamelman helped to write the standards, yet his recipes don't show water as 2 ingredients (Water and Soaker Water).
Hopefully someone with BBGA experience can shed some light on this.
That it's not standard. Or there is no standard. Some might break down a recipe into dry and wet ingredients then go onto splitting that up into what goes into the Pre-Ferment, starter, soaker etc. However here it seems when broken down the dry ingredients of the soaker is a percentage of the flour and so to is the water in the soaker which isn't part of the water that hydrates the flour. So in this table both the dry ingredients of the soaker and the water within the soaker are a percentage to the flour and then further broken down where the dry ingredients of the soaker becomes 100% and the water a percentage of that.
My take on that, with absolutely no bbga experience, was the same as yours. As far as soaker water went, my logic was - if the soaker water gave the desired hydration, final dough water would be 0. And if it didn't, water would be shown in final dough at a % to achieve desired hydration. My hydration number would consider all dry and all wet ingredients - final dough, starter, preferment, and soaker. Which reminds me, I gotta finish that spread. But need to do it on my computer (hard to see the big picture when the screen is small!) and find the time to do it (golf is my priority now, specially since the season is slipping away fast). Would make a good winter project, for a day or 2 anyway.