August 29, 2017 - 6:05pm
What % of Dough is lost
What % of Dough is lost in the process? Let's say I mix a 1000 gram dough. Considering I scrape as much of the dough and ingredients out of bowls and off of the utensils, how much loss should I plan for? I realize there is a variance, just looking for a consensus from other users. I guess it's better to make too much than too little.
It looks to me like my dough is always short to some degree.
Also, any idea on expected % of loss from pre-baked wet dough to cooked and out of the oven bread weight?
--Dan
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Weight loss depends on how much liquid is in the dough. I make a sourdough at 82% hydration, and I lose ABOUT 18% dough weight in the oven (550 dough comes out at 450 cooked and cooled bread). As to your other question, if you have bowl scrapers, it's pretty negligible loss. Although my batches are usually about 80 lbs, so for me it is moot.
It will vary depending on the hydration level and your own own setup.
At my work, our weight loss is 12% from dough to sliced sandwich bread @65% hydration.
Higher hydration levels will result in more weight loss- @80% hydration you can expect around 16%
Early on I seemed to come up short when I divided out my dough so I started increasing the build by about 2 - 5%. As I honed my skills I found that I was losing less dough to the process. The higher the hydration the more likely I am to lose some weight to the process.
Most of my breads are scaled at 750 grams, or at least the formulas are calculated based on that weight. I usually find that, for a batch of six or more I need to scale them at around 745 grams and then redistribute as needed (unless I have deliberately added a bit more flour and water to compensate when mixing). I not only lose weight by having dough stick to hands, counter top, utensils and bowls / buckets, but also there's a significant loss from evaporation when bulk fermenting in the fridge. There is always heavy condensation on whatever cover was on the bowl or bucket.
At 75% hydration the loss is around 15%, but is also sensitive to piece weight with smaller sized pieces losing more than larger ones.
There is another loss that I recently quantified and had not previously considered. When you mix a levain and let it ferment overnight, you loses some weight as sugars are fermented to CO2 and it diffuses out of the dough. 233g of flour in a levain will lose as much as 7g to CO2 overnight. I had been accounting for that loss as bowl and scraper residuals but when I tried to measure it I still had some missing mass. Took a few iterations to convince me that it was real and consistent (and it turns out to match the theoretical fermentation losses quite closely).