November 22, 2014 - 4:25am
Bakers Percentage
Hi! This is my first post after monitoring and learning for months. I am fairly new to baking having started the sourdough culture (Bubba) used most weekends shortly after Christmas last year. The question I have is about bakers percentage. When figuring out a final dough weight of 700gm and a hydration of 75% how do you come up with the beginning flour weight? Thanks so much for the knowledge acquired from all you already.
Stu
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Ignoring the weights of the salt and yeast...
Let's do some algebra! :)
Flour Wieght = F
Water Weight = W
Hydration Percentage = H
Final Dough Weight = FDW
Final dough weight is flour weight + water weight, so FDW = F + W
Water weight is your hydration percentage of the flour weight, so W = F * H / 100.
FDW = F + F * H / 100. = F (1 + H/100).
So, F = FDW / (1 + H / 100.).
Now just plug in the numbers...
F = 700 / (1 + 75/100) = 700/1.75 = 400
W = 400 * 75/100 = 300
Happy baking
Mike
P.S. Think that's right. I haven't had my coffee yet!
Thanks mikes! I knew there had to be an easy way to make the calculation just couldn't get my head around it.
Don't make bricks.
Stu
For any formula. including enrichments such as sugar, DMS, fats, spices etc., simply sum the percentages of all ingredients and divide that into the desired dough weight.
For example:
total flour 100%
water 67
salt 2
yeast 1
=========================
total 170
desired dough weight = 750g
multiplier = ddw/total = 750/170 = 4.41176...
Multiply each percentage by the multiplier, ∴
flour = 441.1g
water = 295.6g
salt = 8.8g
yeast = 4.4g
=========================
total dough = 749.9g (Rounded; close enough for government work.)
cheers,
gary
Yeah, me too. Thanks Gary. That's coming from a finalist in World's Worst Math Student competition. This has greatly helped to make the simple simply simple enough for a simpleton - maybe even me! Maybe by next year when I turn 65 I'll final master this DDW formula. I've run shrieking from anything that goes beyond basic arithmetic.
The same kudos applies to drogon's One Step comment this morning as well. Net year I'l be up for challenging a 2nd grader in math skills. Then again, maybe not...
I have to admit, I've rarely thought about the calculations "backwards" in my baking - ie. thinking "I need XXXg of dough for this loaf, how much flour, water, etc. do I need" ...
But I guess that's mostly because i've just started with some flour and taken it from there. In theory, I could save a bit of money (on the breads I sell) by taking them closer to the regulation weights (which have been done away with these days anyway) of 400g for a small loaf, 800g for a large and in-general multiples of 400g. (This is in the UK). My small loaves come out at between 420 and 445g depending on the flour mix I use and my "standard" is about 650g. My sizes have also been dictated by what seems to sell best too - price vs. size/weight is a big factor where I live.
Your 700g of dough ought to bake out to somewhere between 500 and 550g of finished bread.
Back to the calculator - I hate getting bogged-down with calculations, so I put together a spreadsheet for my recipes, and adjust things so they look good to me, (my starter weights are powers of 2, go-figure) but it doesn't start from final dough weight, but does calculate it, so I can simply adjust the starting flour weight (and water hydration %) to play with final dough weight.
So my basic white sourdough recipe is: Flour: 100%, starter: 40%, water: 60%, salt: 1.5% so that gives us something to work to. Note final hydration% is affected by the 100% hydration of the starter too - that recipe with my 100% starter gives me a final hydration of 67% taking the starter into account.
Playing with the spreadsheet, to get 700g of dough to that recipe needs:
flour: 350g
starter: 140g (at 100% hydration)
water: 210g
salt: 5g.
total dough weight is 705g and final hydration is 67%. For your desired 75% hydration, it's
flour: 330g
starter: 132g
water: 325g
salt 5:
total dough weight: 698g.
As you see, there's not much in it, but taking the starter into account, flour goes down from 400g to 330g and water is up from 300g to 325g.
If you've not made a 75% hydration dough yet, I'd be tempted to cut-back on the water as it can be somewhat of a lively beast to knead and handle... 60% overall hydration will get you a good loaf and it's taking it from a good loaf to a great loaf that's the hard part - longer (multi-staged) ferments, higher hydrations, more fold/turns and so on...
The daily whites I make to that recipe have 800g flour, 320g starter, 480g water and 12g of salt and that makes 3 small loaves or 2 medium/large ones. A boule made with that mix comes out like:
Get baking and enjoy :-)
-Gordon
Thanks that gives me two ways to figure it.
Stu
There is a sourdough calculator here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P7RBFZle75Enp2dmxX3vPFXCiq0cphXtMnkGUiwdkoY/edit#gid=0