Percentages, ratios, an extra ingredients
I’m just learning baker’s percentages and the attendant ratios. I get the flour, water, yeast, salt ratio, but what about when you add other ingredients, specifically sugar, fat and eggs, and then things like potato flakes and dehydrated milk, and all those little goodies you add during the second knead. How do they figure in the baker’s percentage? Are they represented as a percent of the total flour? Are eggs part of the hydration (Do I figure the percent based on the flour, then subtract that weight from the total hydration)?
Here’s a formula I’m working on that illustrates my dilemma. It’s a recipe for shokupan, translated into a formula:
100% bread flour, 70% hydration, 1.6% salt, 1.6% yeast. The recipe also contains sugar, butter, and dried milk. Using the recipe, the sugar and butter each become 7% of the flour, and the dried milk figures out to 3.3%. The tangjhon (the starter) is 6.8% of the total flour, and 50% of the total water. Are those fairly common ratios for the “extra” ingredients?
i guess my question is if ingredients that are not the four essentials, how dou you figure them into the final formula?
Can’t comment on Shokupan. I never heard of that bread before. The weight of all flours equal 100%. Every other ingredient is measured against that 100%.
This may be helpful https://www.bbga.org/files/2009FormulaFormattingSINGLES.pdf. Also King Arthur‘s site has some good info.
Hydration, when taking into account eggs and other wet type ingredients are not so easy. I’m not much help there. I decided some time back to follow the recipe, mix the dough accordingly and the feel the hydration. Others will hopefugly have better answers.
Question; are you using a spreadsheet for your formula?
Dan
I did make my own spreadsheet, and I know there are others out there. My spreadsheet talents are as nascent as my baking ability, though, and there’s a certain satisfaction just sitting down and using the calculator (does that make me weird? Or just eccentric?).
I guess my basic question is: how do I utilize a basic dough formula to create my own loaves? If I want to use dehydrated milk, what percent of the flour should it be (and what qualities does it impart for to the dough)? The same for potato flakes. As for eggs, I know that a large AA egg weighs about 55g. I know you’re iffy on whether this is part of the hydration or not (I think I read somewhere that it is), but how much of the total hydration should the eggs equal? That would determine the egg %, right?
i know. I’m needy and confused! (Perhaps I should have said ”kneady?”)