August 17, 2014 - 11:34am
Baker's percentage - finding total flour weight..
I have a a basic understanding of baker's percentage and use it regularly with sourdough, but now I want to make a 1000 gr loaf of whole wheat bread using the formula in Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice on pg 272. Coming up with a total flour weight - or any flour weight has baffled me. In dealing with the soaker and poolish, I may have bit off more than I can chew. Any pointers would be appreciated.
-Larry
Share
error
Well somebody check my math but this is what I come up with for a 1,000 gram loaf. First column is bakers % as given by Reinhart, second column is weight in grams to make up a 1,000 gram loaf.
Soaker
%
Grams
Flour
100
117.8
Water
141
166.1
Total
241
283.9
Poolish
Flour
100
186.8
Yeast
0.41
0.8
Water
88.9
166.1
Total
189.3
353.7
Dough
Soaker
114
283.9
Poolish
142
353.7
Flour
100
249.1
Salt
3.7
9.2
Yeast
1.2
3.0
Honey
16.7
41.6
Oil
5.6
13.9
Egg
18.3
45.6
Total
401.5
1000.0
So, how did you come up with 117.8 gr for the soaker? I trust your math. I thought I knew how to this (it's been awhile) but obviously not.
Well I'm no expert, but this is how I did it.
If you figure that the bakers percentages are just grams, then the numbers as given by Reinhart would make a loaf totaling 401.5 grams.
That means to make a 1,000 gram loaf, you need to make 2.49 times as much.
As an example, for the soaker, Reinhart uses 114%. Take that times 2.49, and you get 283.9 grams, which is the amount of soaker you will need to have for the bigger loaf. You then need to plug that in to the bakers percentages given for the soaker. To make 283.9 grams of soaker, you need 117.8 grams of flour and 166.1 grams of water.
Okay! Now it's starting to sink in. Thanks. I'm sure I'll have to run through this more than a few times to get comfortable with it.
Heh. . . I can't possibly imagine how the ancient egyptians ever baked bread without the use of spreadsheets and supercomputers!
Thanks for the work you put into this, but I'm still missing something. You said you combined the three parts (241+189.3+401.5) and then what? I can't come up with any number like 565 gr for total flour. I do like the idea of combing the parts and using only one overall percentage.
The total dough weight given in the recipe, including soaker and poolish, is 401.5. You want a total dough weight of 1,000. 1000 / 401.5 = 2.49. He multiplied all of the dough ingredients by 2.49.
For the soaker, he took 283.9 (desired weight) / 241 (recipe weight) = 1.178 and multiplied the soaker ingredients by 1.178.
For the poolish, 353.7 / 189.3 = 1.868. Multiply soaker ingredients by 1.868.
The total flour weight is 117.8 + 186.8 + 249.1 = 553.7.
The ancient Egyptians didn't have Peter Reinhart (lucky for them). They just guessed.
It built the pyramids and probably baked their bread, assuming their bread was any good. And mind you, nobody knows if they baked decent bread in ancient Egypt.
Sorry, that should be multiply poolish ingredients by 1.868. You can't edit posts on this board.
hydration you can get the total flour weight for 1000 g of dough that does not include the the salt. If the hydration is 72% then 1000/1.72 = 581 g of flour and 418 g of water. 1 is always the flour and hydration is .72. Added together you get 1.72.