I Created a New Baker's Percentage Tool for Anyone to Use
By trade, I'm a .NET web programmer....who happens to be a former professional artisan baker. I decided to create a tool to make life a little easier. I have seen many questions posted here in regards to volume, weight, and baker's percentage in bread formulas. The tool I have created allows you to convert a "recipe" where the quantities are expressed in volume to a formula where the quantities are expressed in grams, along with the baker's percentage of each ingredient. This is a database driven tool. I have added the most common bread ingredients and the most common volume measurements (US, Metric, and UK). Once the baker's percentage is calculated, you have a total weight and total baker's percentage you can work with to create any batch size. Right now, the tool resides on my home testing server. I will be moving it to one of my hosted websites in the future. For now, just go to breadmagic.com and click the link for the tool. Keep in mind, this server is in my home so I can't guarantee it will be up all the time. I will be creating another tool soon (where weights are known) for creating formulas for breads with up to three preferments.
Comments
how neat! keep us posted on that!
TeaIV
Keep us posted. I'm eager to see your tool for doughs with preferments, which will include sourdough starter, I hope. Hmmmm ... with boxes for flour, water and starter with percent hydration of the starter and baker's percentage of the total formula's flour and water, and ....
Thanks for taking this on!
David
Very cool tool. I also look forward to the addition of starters and preferments. Thanks and appreciated. Dave
Very Cool. Will this always be a web product hosted on a server or will a user be able to DL the spread sheet?
Eric
I'll boogey over to portal monkeys soon.
cheers.
ArtisanGeek: very nice! I'm a .net coder as well. Any chance you could make your source and database schema available? I noticed that the ingredients only allow a volume entry. It would be nice to allow weight entry for all items, although you could back into those numbers.
Andy
this is great, thanks for making it available. Like others have said, I look forward to your adding starters and preferments - not that I want to make more work for you or anything...
Thanks again,
Marni
Great tool - but most of us already use weights, rather than volume. Are you going to have one where we put in the weights? I would love something like this in which to add the preferments as well. It would help we bakers speak more of the same language.
Wow . . . thanks!
Wow, I didn't expect so many comments....thank you all for your kind words. I will try to address all of your questions. Yes, I do plan on making a new tool where the weights are known and the user can input the weight values. Also, the tool will take preferments/starters into account. For example, if you wanted to take a straight dough formula and add a starter that will comprise 10% of the overall dough weight....there will be input fields for the 10% and the starter hydration %. The tool will generate the appropriate starter flour and water weight along with the adjustments to the overall formula; this way, you can experiment with adding preferments to your favorite formulas without effecting the overall hydration of the dough. Now, about the code and database: I need to clean up the code (C#) and finish the database. I need to add new columns and tables for the new tools. Also, there is some code I can add for a "Export to Excel" button that you can click to generate a spreadsheet to download to your desktop. That's doable, but I try to avoid it because the end result is not always pretty if you have the wrong version of Office. Meanwhile, let me know if there are any additional tools or any additonal functions you would like to see for the current tool. I have to work on this stuff at night and on the weekends, so I can't guarantee that I can make it really fast. Once again, thank you all for your positive responses!
It would be helpful if you did just one thing for the white and whole wheat flour catagories.
Can you indicate the source for the conversion? I often assume a cup of AP flour is 125 grams but other sources range from 113 to 150.
Similarly, why is the whole wheat more dense then the white? If WW is more dense than white flour, does it make more sense to develop a larger number of catagories based on the percentage of WW?
Meryl
To find the weight in grams for each ingredient, I used more than one source. I have several baking books that list approximated weights for a given volume. I also use a few online sources, such as the USDA Nutrient database. If there are slight discrepencies between the sources for a given ingredient, I use an average. I did my homework on this thing to ensure accuracy. However, for the weights to be accurate, it depends on the baker measuring the ingredients properly; for example, spooning a level cup of flour, not packing it in the measuring cup. Bear in mind that the only reason I made this tool was because there are some people who have no accurate scale or simply don't want to take the time to convert a recipe (that uses volume) by weighing out each measurement. The new tool I am working on assumes the user has a scale. About the flour weight differences: If you check the tool again, you will see the white weights 125 per cup and whole wheat weighs 120. Therefore, white flour is more dense, not whole wheat as you stated. Whole wheat is slightly less dense because its bran content is lighter than the endosperm (white) part. Weigh out a cup of pure wheat bran and you will be amazed at how light it is.
This is AWESOME!!!
I look forward to your updates.
Wow!! How exciting!!
If your are referring to the "Custom Batch TooL" . all other ingredients go in the blank boxes below "water". The blank boxes at the top are for flour only and their baker's percentage total will always equal 100%. If you are referring to the "Volume Conversion Tool", I haven't added the other fields yet to factor in those ingredients. I need to add some more features to my bread tools but I have not had time to work on them lately.