The Fresh Loaf

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NMNF sourdough calculator

sallam's picture
sallam

NMNF sourdough calculator

Since dabrownman's no-muss-no-fuss technique is very popular among TFLers, I thought I design a spreadsheet to automatically calculate the water and flour quantities used to build the NMNF starter and levain. The spreadsheet can also calculate the final dough ingredients based on the percentages that you follow and type next to each ingredient. It can be used with any SD recipe, I guess. It has room for 5 extra ingredients, where you can optionally type their names and percentages, if you are doing more than a water-flour-salt basic recipe. All you have to do is fill a few yellow cells, then the sheet should give you the proper quantities to use in each stage, from starter to levain to final dough.

Please let me know if I forgot anything, and I'll gladly edit the sheet.

To get the sheet please click here: NMNF sourdough calculator

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

You put a lot of work into this.  Thanks and

Happy baking

sallam's picture
sallam

You welcome. I'm glad you liked the sheet.

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

When I enter 100 for the starter quantity I get -19 for the water in the 3rd build column.

I see, I need to enter the hydration for the build. I think it would be more natural for that to be in row 2 rather than in row 3.

sallam's picture
sallam

Thanks for the tip. I've edited the sheet. You can now download the new one.

sallam's picture
sallam

Sometimes we may need to refresh the levain with some water and/or flour (if the levain was retarded for a long time and collapsed) to get it back to its peak before using in the dough. So I've just edited the sheet. Now there is 2 optional sheet cells to add any quantity of water or flour used to refresh the levain, and the sheet subtracts them for the total flour and water to be used in the final dough. The new sheet is now available in the same link in the first post.

sallam's picture
sallam

I've added a date cell to record the date you started your seed, so that anytime you start the sheet it shows you how many days it has been in the fridge. You can also record the date of a second batch, if you decided to build another seed weeks before the first batch is all used up, to allow it to age a bit by the time the first batch is all used up.

You can upload the newly updated sheet from the same link in the first post

StevenSensei's picture
StevenSensei

I was working on something similar myself as I was reading through the tremendously large thread for NMNF. I'm really impressed by your work. I was wondering if you could help me though? When working on my own version to better understand both excel and this process...I can't seem to figure out the math behind building the starter and the Levain. I tried to look at yours but the cells are locked (a perfectly reasonable thing to do).

Could you explain how you figured out the calculations or what the calculations actually are? I'm not having any luck trying to reverse engineer the math from the table in the original post.

Alternatively, if you are willing to share a version of the sheet with the cells not protected so I can see what's going on under the hood so to speak it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

sallam's picture
sallam

Here is a copy i uploaded for you in Google sheets, unprotected. Check it out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10c0lGUVnIKW-N9kF42HU464GQLZ3OwAzRXaxIk2kKlQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I get page not found.

phaz's picture
phaz

Not the same as in this thread, one I created - delete the test data though it does show how I would handle recipe testing

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66393/test

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

Thanks