Confusion about bakers percentage in Reinhardt's book
In Reinhardt's Whole Grain Breads book, he lists bakers percentage for the soaker and starter, but omits it for the final dough.Let's take the whole wheat sandwich bread on page 100 as an example. If I"m using bakers percentage, then I base everything off the flour and I simply use 2, 3, 4 cups, or whatever, at 100% and base the other ingredients off of that. I don't care about the 1 3/4 cup that the recipe lists for the flour. So here's what I can't figure out. I'll just describe one ingredient to keep it simple. The recipe shows 1 3/4 cup of flour for the soaker and the same for the biga. The flour is 100 for the bakers formula as I mentioned. But lets say I' use the 1 3/4 cups listed in the book. I make the soaker and biga with the 1 3/4 cup flour each and now I get to the final dough, which says to combine the soaker and biga and additional ingredients, including 3 1/2 tablespoons of flour. Remember I said there is no bakers percentage shown for the final dough. So what if I used 3 cups of flour for the soaker and 3 cups for the biga using the bakers percentage? Not what do I do for the final dough? The book said 3 1/2 teaspoons of flour, but that is based on 1/3/4 cups flour for the soaker and biga and I used 3 cups. What am I supposed to do here? Why aren't bakers percentages listed for the final dough? I would think the soaker and biga could be combined for the 100% and the rest of the ingredients percentages of that, but no. And nowhere does the book explain how to handle this. I have no idea how to figure the measurements for the 8 ingredients in the final dough recipe if I started with bakers percentage for the soaker and biga. Another item of confusion is there is a beige box called 'Bakers formula' on page 101 that lists different ingredients with their percentages including one for milk, and milk isn't even an ingredient in the whole wheat sandwich bread recipe. So I don't know why that information is there and how it relates to the recipe, and these beige boxes appear for the other recipes as well. There must be a simple explanation to this that the author unwisely assumed that everyone should know, but I certainly don't. Can anyone explain how to interpret this recipe if using bakers percentage?
And does anyone know why he says to chop the biga into 12 small pieces, flour them, and then combine back with the rest of the ingredients? He says to do this extra step in all the recipes, but why? He doesn't explain the reason. Maybe it's supposed to make the mixing easier?
If anyone can help with either of these, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to get some value out of the book, but I'm lost with how to handle the recipes using bakers percentage. I don't want to use volume or ounces.
Thanks & Regards,
Lance