Somethings wrong with my Bakers Math...
Hi all
I have made bread for a few months now and allways mixed whole Wheat Flour with white Flour.
The other day I tried with white Flour only and found out that the dough was a little to wet, so I changed the hydration from 70% to 65%. This was when I found out that my bakers math has room for improvement.
I allwas calc the ingredients from my total weight of dough and this is how I normally do it...
| Total Doughweight | 1548 | ||
| Ingredient | Percentage | Calcs | Weight (g) |
| Flour | 100 | 1548 / (172/100) = | 900 |
| Vand | 70 | 900 * (70/100) = | 630 |
| Salt | 2 | 900 * (2/100) = | 18 |
| Total | 172 | 1548 |
So I changed the hydration to 65%, still the same amount go total dough and it looks like this...
| Total Doughweight | 1548 | ||
| Ingredient | Percentage | Calcs | Weight (g) |
| Flour | 100 | 1548 / (167/100) = | 926.94 |
| Vand | 65 | 927 * (65/100) = | 602.55 |
| Salt | 2 | 927 * (2/100) = | 18.54 |
| Total | 167 | 1548 |
I understand that I have to add more flour and less water to get the same amount (1548 gram) of dough, but the thing that worries me is that the Salt has raised from 18.00 grams to 18.54 grams. I mean its the same total amount of dough so the amount of salt should be constant.
What am I doing wrong here?
Ratio of salt is to the flour! Your flour weight has changed to allow for the lower hydration but the same weight final dough. But the salt is constant to the amount of flour hence the discrepancy.
Thanks for the answer. I do see what you mean. It only changes a little amount and it propobly doesent affect the taste of the breads that much. Ohh well I guess I have to accept that Bakers Percentage is not an exact science, or at least not as precise as I thought it to be :)
Btw the dough comes to 1548.03 and not 1548. There's your discrepancy. But we're talking a very minor discrepancy. Won't make any difference. Maths is not my strong point, and I found your method of conversion difficult to follow, so perhaps someone else can help here. But I've just checked the ratios in your final dough and all looks good to me. It is 65% hydration, the salt is 2% and it adds up to 1548. Good to go! :)
I would disagree - it is a very exact science. But working the math can throw some people. I got tired enough of it that I wrote an app to do the work and as math should, it always comes out exactly correct.
It's a funny old thing. Designed (as I understand it) to enable scaling up and down of recipes - everything hinges on the total (dry) flour weight. (not flour + salt + other dry stuff)
This presents a problem (for me, anyway) when I want to scale a recipe based on dough weight, or even final baked weight (loaves sold in the UK are by final baked weight when wrapped and you have to take into account weight loss due to evaporation over the expected shelf-life of the product - hmph!)
So e.g. I want rolls scaled at 140g of dough and someone asks me for 100... That's 14Kg of dough, but how much flour?
This is the same idea as you need - you are looking to keep the dough weight the same, but work out the flour & water needed.
Fortunately it's simple - You take the desired hydration as a fraction, add 1 to it and divide the dough weight by it. So in my case, I want 62% hydration, so 14,000 / 1.62 = 8642g of flour, subtract this from the total to get the water: 5259g.
In your case: 1546g of dough at 65%: 1546 / 1.65 = 937g flour, subtract this from 1546 = 609g water.
Salt & yeast won't make much difference at this level. Use the same as before - the dough will gain a few grams, but it's not critical for this. I scale salt to the baked weight anyway - 1546g of dough is going to bake to about 1200g, so I'd put in 12g of salt. (1% baked weight - just to add to the complexity)
Wholemeal flour will absorb a little more water than pure white, so reducing the hydration a little is usually prudent.
-Gordon
to calculate the amounts. If you got a rule for how much salt goes in how much dough, you're ready to go. The salt could even be a percent of the final dough, that way it could be scaled easly. Its not the first time Ive seen your method being used, I think that Dabrownman is using the same approach... or very similar. Its very simple to remember and quick to implement.
So I (mostly) bake to sell and am based in the UK... Here the FSA guidelines are to not have more than 1% salt in the baked bread. That throws the calculations somewhat as its impossible to tell exactly what the bakes weight will be... So as I mostly make breads that end up multiples of 400g then it's not that hard - so I make dough to make 6 x 400g loaves, so I need 4g salt per loaf, so 24g salt. In practice my loaves bake to about 435g so I'm actually under the recommended limit... (and I've not had any complaints about taste)
The tricky part is working out the salt when asked for weird lots - e.g. 100 rolls scaled at 140g of dough - so I sort of assume that they'll bake to 100g, so its 1g salt per roll, so 100g salt in the lot.
It's only a guideline though ...
-Gordon
If you change the amount of flour then the final bread is going to change. So the increased salt is going to compensate to help flavor the extra flour. Otherwise the flour is going to dilute the salt flavoring.
The general rule is 1.8-2.2% of the total flour as salt unless you have a reason to go lower. IME, if you go below 1.5% then the dough is going to act differently since the salt isn't there to slow the yeast down as much (plus the flavor profile is not what I am after unless it is some special flour or enrichment or something). Personally I would keep the 2% and ~18.5g of salt.
Of course the fact that this is all white is going to change the flavor anyway so you might end up playing with the salt no matter what the hydration. I always start with 2% unless I am following a formula that says otherwise. It is rare that I make a bread only 1 time and salt is something that is a bit subjective but can be adjusted within reason.
Just remember, in a lean dough, the salt is flavoring the flour, not the water. This is one of the reasons we use baker's percentage based on flour.
more salt. If I changed the hydration to 60, the difference would be 1 gram. No big deal.
I like the approach Gordon is using though, with dividing the total amount of dough with the percentage of water (+1) to get the amount of flour. If I subtract the weight of Salt first, I would be able to maintain 18g for whatever hydration.
BTW Maverick, I send you a Personal Message, some days ago, asking about the Prefermented Flour. I cant seem to find anything about what you mentioned in the other thread.
I sent you a reply earlier this morning. If it didn't come let me know.
As to figuring out the amount of flour, I do something similar except I include everything. I just add up all the percentages and divide the batch weight by that number. I do this because this works for enriched bread as well as lean dough. If all you make is lean dough then it won't matter much unless you make a lot more dough because all you are dealing with is the 2% salt.
Let's take a pan de mie (pullman loaf) formula:
Batch weight is 1234g
Take 1234/1.853 (same as 185.3%) and get a rounded weight of 666g of flour. Now let's make your famous 1548g of the same bread: 1548/1.853 is ~835g of flour. Easy.
So, while in your formula the difference is probably similar to something you would encounter with rounding or how your scale works, you can see that in the long run you might want to be able to adapt to more complicated formulas. Like I said, I personally would include the 2% salt in my calculations just for consistency sake.
So I would take 1548/1.72 instead of 1548/1.70 (or 1548/1.62 vs 1548/1.60, etc). Again this is just how I deal with batch weight and baker's percentage, etc. for all my breads and try to keep my thinking consistent (plus my spreadsheet does the work for me now haha). There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it the other way. You shouldn't think that one way is right or wrong. Just choose a way and go with it. You can even change how you do it each time if you want.
I just checked my PM and found your message. Thank you for taking time to write it so detailed.
I also replied and in short I think we use a similar approach, except for the salt part.
http://www.calcmasa.com
I'll check it out when I get home :-)
If you're using a Mac, you could also try the free version of Breadstorm software, I highly recommend it.
cheers
I dont use Mac. But it is an interesting site you link to. Very nice graphics, especially the feeding calculator :-)
So after all this discussion about salt, I put together a nice Vermont sourdough and realized afterwards that for various reasons I had enough starter to make a second one. I throw it together and notice that it fermented faster than it should have which threw me off because the other one was acting normal. I cook it up and it turned out nice looking but a little more spread out (overfermented).
I was cleaning up and realized that I hadn't put the salt in the second batch. I tried a piece and sure enough ... no salt! Still good with jam or butter, but talk about boring. At least I have the other loaf which is actually enough to last us a bit anyway. I was just making the second to further test the starter I have been reviving. The starter passed the test, but I didn't ;)
It has not happend to me yet, but if you add some rush and stress, I bet its the recipe to pull the trigger.
I usually taste the dough once it is mixed and did so for the first batch, but failed to for the second batch. This is exactly why I started tasting the dough. That way you always know if you forgot something like salt. I don't know if this is a common practice, but I think it makes sense. I also often taste my starter :)
I don't always plan ahead to make bread, but I almost never put a second loaf together of the same formula after finishing the first. I have been resurrecting a starter so had more than usual and was getting ready to dump the surplus when I decided to make a second batch.