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In October, 2008 I posted a formula for Greenstein's Jewish Sour Rye which converted his recipe, which was written in volume measurements, to ingredient weights. I have made this bread many times since, but I've never bothered to calculate the baker's percentages for the formula. I decided to do so today and thought I would post the procedures as a tutorial on “baker's math” for new baker's and others who have just never gotten comfortable with this very valuable tool.

Here is the formula I wrote in 2008.

When I started baking bread again about four years ago, one of my principal reasons was to bake a good Jewish Sour Rye, a favorite bread I could not get locally. Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker was one of the first bread books I acquired, and I found his Jewish Sour Rye Bread at least as good as any I could remember eating.

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Hi everyone. Even though I have been baking, I haven’t posted in quite awhile. This semolina bread is from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread book. It uses a flying sponge which allows the baker to start and finish a bake all in one day. Great for the absentminded who forget to build a levain the night before! A flying sponge uses commercial yeast along with flour and water and ferments for about 75 minutes.

Today,   I made a tiny little leap to no where in particular by teaching a small class to make bagels.    Since people (including me) had limited time I did a few practice rounds, taking note of the times, so we could fit in everything, including a potluck lunch, into a 2 hour period.

The Bread Baker's Guild of America has a recommended format for publishing bread formulas.

You can find it here.

I'll post later on more functional aspects of the format.