The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

bakers percentage

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

bakers percentage

Hello friends,

 

 I am looking for some advice. I want to add bakers percentages to all my bread recipes. I am pretty sure I have the math down. I wonder is this format okay? Thanks for any advice. 

 

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Total Formula:

Flour: %

Water: %

Salt: %

Yeast: %

 

Biga:

Flour: weight + %

Water: weight + %

Yeast: weight + %

 

Final Dough:

Flour: weight + %

Water: weight + %

Salt: weight + %

Yeast: weight + %

Biga: weight + %

 

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

Thank you. That looks nice and clean. I am glad I asked before I edited a lot of documents. 

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

Thanks, so much, I like that article/ lesson. Very helpful, thanks for taking the time to post.

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

You might be interested in these sheets. They ere both built with the BBGA standards in mind.  Leslie Ruf and I worked on a Dough Calculator project a while back. Both sheets are proven and are in use now. If you have any questions get with me or Leslie.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52683/bakers-percentages-spreadsheet-available-download-need-help

 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/53703/dough-calculator-my-version

Dan

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

Thank you, Doug.

 

 The spread sheets are interesting to be sure. I will play around with them.

 

 Thanks, for your response. I appreciate the help.

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

I wished Hamelman would have used grams instead of ounces. Grams break down into much  smaller units. For example, an ounce by weight contains 28 (rounded off) grams. In the case of yeast where 2 grams may called for; using ounces instead would equate to 1/14 of an ounce. Ounces don’t calculate well on a spreadsheet. 

Hammelman’s book Bread is a favorite of mine. But every bread I bake from his book is first translated into grams. Make sure you use a scale when making bread. 

In my Dough Calculator sheet there is a tab called Weight Converter. Use it to enter ounces and get grams. In the case of your recipe/formula above take the converted grams and enter them into Weights to Percentage table. It is located to the left of the formula table on the first tab. Once the percentages are calculated for each ingredient enter those percentages into the Total Dough section of the main table. Read the document (there is a link on the main sheet) that contains the instructions to use the calculator for more help. 

If you (like me) are not numerically inclined this may look intimidating. But the great majority of avid baker’s on this forum wii heartily agree that Baker’s Percentages rule. 

Good Luck. We’re here to help. 

Dan

Portus's picture
Portus

... ounces, etc. to grams in Hamelman's recipes for home baking is to divide his metric quantities by 10.  This will also indicate eventual loaf size.

Example: "Total yield" is shown as 17.14kg.  Dividing by 10 gives ~1.7kg or two loaves of 850g each.  If this is too large, a simple scaling down of measurements will suffice. This relates to his Rustic Bread recipe (edit)

Hope this helps. Joe

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

More times than not I have taken formulas written in volume and converted to grams. It is tedious and annoying, However, I find gives better result and is neater to boot!

 

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

850 gm. that is a nice big batard! The ones I made yesterday were 780gm. aprox. and they were huge!. I just weighed the final dough and divided by 2. for what ever reason, my actually yield was less than your calc. Still close enough for rock a roll! Thank you, for your reply. I very much do like the idea of bakers % for a lot of reasons. 

 

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Will, you said, ”for what ever reason, my actually yield was less than your calc”. It is good to mix a little more than needed. I never end up with exactly the same weight as the TDW (total dough weight). There is some slight loss, depending on how clean you scrape the bowls, dough left on hands, etc..

Portus's picture
Portus

... also referred to a the angels' share ;-)

JustJoel's picture
JustJoel

I’m pretty new to baking. Anything, let alone bread! But I got a bread machine at the urging of my husband, and it was love at first sight!

I’ve come along far enough to start wanting to create my own breads, and tweak the recipes that I have, and understand what happened when things went wrong (or right. It happens occasionally).

Assuming a basic French bread (poolishes, bigas, tangjhon, and levains are topics for other forums):

Flour 100%. Hydration 67%-70%. Salt 2%. Yeast 1% (Okay, okay. Poolish 30% of flour at 100% hydration.)

Great French bread! But what if I want to make a brioche? Or a rye? Or a sweet cranberry bread? That means eggs, sugar, fat, maybe sour cream, or potato flakes, or dehydrated milk, plus all those little yummies that you add during the second knead. What percentages are these, and how do they affect the percentages of the flour, water, salt, yeast combination that is basic to every leavened bread? Are eggs a part of the hydration percent? Is sour cream a fat? A liquid? Both? What is the ratio for fat; not in any particular recipe, but in a baker’s formula? And sugar is a real nightmare!

I have three wishes:

1. Let‘s get rid of avoirdupois. Metric just makes the math easier.   2. If you’re a cookbook author, especially if your strong point is baking, by all means include cups and teaspoons, but please include weight. See #1  3. Every professional chef stresses the importance of accurate measurements, which necessitate weighing ingredients, and the importance of formulas as opposed to recipes. Please include your formula when writing a bread recipe! Oh, and bonus wish: please someone write, not a cookbook with recipes (although I love those!), but more of a textbook listing basic formulas for different types of doughs. I’ll help do the research and the writing!

But enough with the rant of a newbie, wannabe baker. Any help at all understanding the baker’s ratio, past the basics, please! I’d love to have a conversation with you! Enlighten me! Be my Yoda! Okay, guess I’m sounding a bit like a drama queen. After all it’s only bread, right?