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Hydration - baker's percentages

mahaiku's picture
mahaiku

Hydration - baker's percentages

I scaled down a recipe I found for lean dough to bake a small boule.  I scaled it down by dividing each ingredient by 8.  I thought that using half the amount of water to flour meant a 50% hydration dough and I hadn't yet learned about the Baker's Percentage.  These amounts work well and I've enjoyed the resulting bread. 

8 cups flour         =         1 cup flour
4 cups water        =         1/2 cup water
2 tbsp salt            =         3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp yeast         =         3/4 tsp yeast

Today, I weighed my ingredients to see if they followed the Baker's Percentage.

1 cup flour = 132 g
1/2 cup water = 109 g
3/4 tsp salt = 3 g
3/4 tsp yeast = 2 g

With these weights my 1/2 cup water which weighs 109 g works out to be almost 83% hydration

.83 x 132 g = 109.56 g

Is this calculation correct?

Thanks for any comments.  I'm just wondering as I may wish to scale my recipe up slightly and want to ensure I get the same bread quality.

Stay inspired!
Michelle

boule

I'm still attempting to get a handle on scoring the dough.  These scores may be a bit deep, but it tasted good :). lol

 

Abe's picture
Abe (not verified)

Hydration = water /flour x 100 

All by weight! 

I get 82.5% hydration which matches your almost 83% hydration. 

I'm not sure on your formula as you didn't show the working out. You started with 83% hydration and then divided by 100 and multiplied the answer by the flour to match the water weight. Seems like a bit of trial and error there. 

But if you have the water and flour weight then there's no trial and error. 

mahaiku's picture
mahaiku

Thanks Abe.  Yes, I had to kind of reverse the formula to determine what my actual % of hydration was as it definitely wasn't the recommended 65% from the initial Baker's Percentage shown in a video I watched. lol  I'm not good at math, which is why I wanted to verify that I was understanding the Baker's Percentage.  Now that I know I'm figuring it out right, I will use 83% water to 100% flour to calculate any scaling up of the recipe.

David R's picture
David R

...with "8 cups of flour" is that it's only as accurate as "8 teenagers' worth of pizza". ☺️ How much flour is actually in 8 cups - nobody knows, it depends. When you use grams, you know what you're working with.

mahaiku's picture
mahaiku

yep, using grams is best - although "eight teenagers worth of pizza" did make me laugh