March 19, 2012 - 3:04am
Hydration % Calculation
Hi there,
I'm wondering whether people include levain flour and water into their calculations, when working out hydration levels. Assuming my levain is a mass of 100% just-fed starter; if I bake a loaf with 100g levain, 200g water, and 300g flour - do I have:
a) 66.6% (200/300) x 100
b) 71.4% (250/350) x 100
I assume that I would have 'b', but assumptions have gotten me into trouble before now...
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Thank you, Millstone, for the great links.
So it is 'b'; case closed!
Not sure about the links, but it's 'number B' for total hydration.
Yes, I should really have said that Millstone sent me a message with the links:
http://samartha.net/SD/SDcalc04.html
http://joshuacronemeyer.github.com/Flour-and-Water/
The latter was particularly convenient (and colourful :).
There was a thread on TFL a few months ago that referred to this link from Bread Bakers Guild of America. It also has a link to a "standard" spreadsheet for calculating percentage. Interestingly, the spreadsheet doesn't indicate a calculation for the final hydration after all the preferments, but it show the totals for each ingredient, so it is easy to calculate. I believe that in "Bread" Hamelman follows this format.
-Brad
the BBGA standard does indeed include a calculation for the "final hydration after all the pre ferments." That is the exact purpose of the "total formula" columns - the ingredients for the pre ferements are subtracted from this to give the flour and water amounts for the final dough (note that there are no baker's percentages there - they have been covered in the baker's percentages of the Total Formula and Preferments columns.)
A small thing, perhaps, but if you bake using the total formula and pre ferements columns rather than the pre ferment and final dough columns - you may get some odd results...
Hope this helps.
That's a great document, thank you for sharing; I've grabbed a copy!
Here is my spreadsheet in which you can manipulate the final hydration:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fUKtfxm5ll7buStB8LGgPq-6so6K9prrttvb0gfwH_8/edit?usp=sharing
I've converted the spreadsheet to a web based calculator. You can find it here:
https://stanton-finley.com/weblog/sourdough-recipe-calculator.html
Stanton the calculator is very nice and so simple to use.
But WOW, your photography is out of sight. Breath taking... I viewed all 11 pages. I felt like I had been on a wonderful vacation. Thanks for that!
Dan
Thank you Dan.
recipe of you ask me. There is never any confusion, very simple that way and it is accurate as can be, It is usually better to follow the rules in things since someone went to a lot of trouble, trial and error to figure them out and make them as simple as possible
Levain
2% starter
10% prefermented flour
10% water
Dough
40% WW
50% Bread flour
75% water
2% salt
5% Walnuts
4% bread spice
5% cranberries
203% Total Formula.