August 25, 2022 - 1:17pm
Help with Baker's Percentage
How do you calculate the Baker’s Percentage when the formula includes a starter?
Example:
FOR THE STARTER
35 grams sourdough starter
80 grams warm water
135 grams bread flour
FOR THE FINAL DOUGH
60 grams warm water
232 g egg
6 grams table salt
55 grams vegetable oil
60 grams granulated sugar
400 grams bread flour
Fully fermented sourdough starter
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FOR THE STARTER
FOR THE FINAL DOUGH
Formula: Weight of Ingredient (be it water, salt, oil, sugar or starter) / Weight of Flour x 100
It might be easier to put flour at the top since everything is a percentage to the flour. Then water and salt. Put the starter at the end and all other ingredients in descending order by weight in-between. It'll be easier to see and make sense of it all. Like so....
FOR THE STARTER
FOR THE FINAL DOUGH
The mystery 232 g is EGG. Sorry for the mistake, and thanks for your answer.
Hi Ibor,
In professional baking, the total amount of flour in that loaf is taken as 100%. In this case, it is either 535g or 557g (157g flour is in leaven and 400g is added when the bread dough is mixed, i.e. this recipe has about 30% prefermented flour) .
The difference between 535 and 557 g of total flour is whether those 35g of sourdough starter in the first line stay inside the bread or are taken out after the dough ferments to use as a seed to prepare the next batch of bread dough.
Then you divide every number in that list of ingredients by 557 and write it like so, rounding to the nearest %, as if it was made from 100kg or 100lbs of flour:
Total
100 flour
1 salt
11 sugar
10 oil
42 mystery liquid
27 water, warm
(Between the mystery liquid and water, overall hydration is 69%)
Leaven/levain
6 starter, 63% hydration
24 bread flour
14 water, warm
Dough
72 bread flour
44 starter/levain, fully mature, 63% hydration
1 salt
11 sugar
10 oil
11 water, warm
42 mystery liquid (milk?)
_______________
Total bread flour 100%
Dough yield 191%
It can be expressed that way too. A difference between a six and two threes. One recipe can be written multiple ways! In Ibor's example, the way Ibor has expressed the recipe, the 400g becomes 100% in the final dough.
So another table can be written before the starter pre-ferment and be called the Overall Formula as in your example. Each time a step is completed the flour in each step becomes 100% in baker's percentages.
The mystery liquid is EGG. Sorry for the mistake.
I'm getting confused here as well as I thought baker's percentages were used to easily compare recipes etc.
With these different methods around it becomes difficult to compare things like hydration.
For me (assuming all egg is liquid and nothing is discarded and starter is 100% hydration), I would come to a hydration percentage of close to 80% for this dough.
Flours
0.5 x 35 + 135 + 400 = 552.5
Liquids
0.5 x 35 + 80 + 60 + 232 (egg) + 55 (oil) = 444.5
Hydration: 444.5/552.5 x 100 = 80 %
Am I right? Or is this not a universal way of looking at it?
@Rem, most TFLers use BBGA's system, which, if using a spreadsheet, shows "total dough percentages" and "preferment percentages".
Abe showed preferment and "_final_ dough percentages". Mariana showed "_total_ dough percentages."
You can read the whole story here: https://www.bbga.org/files/2009FormulaFormattingSINGLES.pdf
Various established authors do it differently. Chad Robertson uses final dough percentages. Hamelman shows total dough percentages and preferment percentages. Forkish shows just total dough percentages.
The BBGA system allows comparing formulas easier.
If the formula author is not ultra-specific and precise in their wording, you can't tell what system they are using unless they also show their _weights_. This is why a spreadsheet or printed table, showing weights and percentages, is the best way to communicate a formula.
Some amateur bakers are sometimes not precise enough in their wording when they don't give a table/spreadsheet, and so if they only give percentages and not weights, you can't tell if they mean it as Abe and Chad intend it, or as Mariana intends it. (Abe is very clear in describing his own formulas, so there is no problem understanding his posts.)
The mainstays at TFL, the most prolific posters, post great spreadsheets that make their formulas perfectly clear.
Thanks
Egg is not water, it has 76% water in it and moistens flour, but it is not counted as water in "baker's hydration"%. It is counted as enriching ingredient along with sugar and fat to see how rich is that bread, the degree of enrichment of its dough.
Fat is not water, it has zero or nearly zero moisture content, it does not moisten (hydrate) flour, does not help gluten form, etc.
Thus, for example, pannetone dough has nearly liquid, very soft consistency, but it has nearly no water in it, its baker's hydration % is super low, about 30%. It is mostly moistened by eggs and made very soft and liquidy by sugar and fat in its formula.
P.S. The starter is normally fed/refreshed as is usual for that starter. If the feed is 63% hydration, then the original starter had the same 63%, not 100%hydration, not 50%, not 150%. But 63%.
Why assume another number? Because your own starter is 100% hydration? It won't make too much difference for that specific formula, but be careful in the future. 100% hydration starters or even 100% hydration levains are rare. Most wheat based starters are firmer or much softer (more liquid) than 100%.
Thanks for the clarification Mariana
I was not aware that eggs and oil/fat doesn't count into hydration percentages. I thought all liquids contributed. Another lesson learned.
Aa for starter: i just picked a number easy to work with, but your warning is appreciated.
What about flakes (oatmeal, malted wheat flakes, etc.), meals (rye meal), or other grain additives? Are they counted with the flour?
Hamelman in Bread appears to count rye chops with the flour, but cracked wheat is not. How are they different? That seems to be an inconsistency. What is that the usual convention?
It's a gray area, alcophile.
In Europe and Eurasia, everything that is "breadmaking grain" (rye, wheats, oats, barley and corn), whole kernels, all degrees of schrot (cracked, flaked, crushed grain) and all meals and flours (semola, semolina and semolina rimacinata particle size, and flour particle size) including bran, gluten flour and pure starches (elements of flour so to speak, but not "real", or "complete" flours) is counted towards 100% grain base of breads. Mostly because any one of them can be made into bread or pastry on its own.
In North America, the land of plenty, where whole kernel breads like pumpernickels or even dark and heavy whole grain breads are not traditional, bakers tend to see them as inclusions, similar to seeds and nuts, whole, chopped or coarsely ground, even though they moisten and form gluten with time, etc., and only "proper" flours are seen as bread bases.
Most likely, the reason for it is that without lengthy presoaking or when the dough making process is very brief they do behave as inclusions All-American cracked wheat bread for example is a super soft enriched white bread with clearly seen and felt inclusions of semi soft cracked wheat bits.
That said, there are a lot of premixed compositions of flour and cracked/crushed grains sold by the millers to the bakeries and retail customers in North America. We do not even know the % of inclusions in that mix and will count the whole shebang as 100% grain base in bread.
This thing is further complicated by the reality of modern baking such as gluten free and keto baking which is not exactly "flourless", but their powders/flours are not traditional grain flours either. They are milled flaxseeds, coconut or almond or potato flour, etc.
So, for publications we should follow the rules of the individual publishing platforms, publishing houses, or magazines as in bbga's "Bread Lines" publication requirements. And for baking, just be aware of it, that different countries and schools of baking inside each country tend to have vastly different traditions of expressing their bread recipes. Some are so strange and seemingly counterintuitive that it takes me forever to figure out their recipes and follow them. But the resulting bread is always worth it.
Thank you mariana. Your post was informative, as always.
I tend to like the European convention of including cereal grains in the bakers' percentage calculation. The cereal grains all absorb water and thus the hydration is affected by them. I realize nut and seeds also absorb water but to a lesser degree.