June 29, 2019 - 10:07am
Baker's math for pizza dough (I'm new here)
I'm tracking my daily calories and need help figuring out how much cooked pizza (in grams) is made from 200 grams of whole spelt flour plus 200 grams of unbleached AP white flour.
I found the calculation for bread here - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/baker039s-math
Is it the same for pizza?
400g x 1.7 = 680g of baked pizza?
Thanks and have a nice day ?
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Here's how I would approach this one if I wanted to figure out calories in my pizza.....calculate the total calories of a whole pie by figuring the calories for each ingredient. Spelt flour and AP flour are pretty close to each other at roughly 4 calories per gram. So, you have 1600 calories with your 400g of total flour. What are you going to put on top? When I'm tracking calories, I weigh everything, so, weigh your sauce, weigh your cheese, and weigh any other toppings. Once you have the total calories in your pie, you can either just cut it into equal sized pieces (estimate), and divide the total calories to get your per slice amount.....OR, if you are weird like me, you can weigh the whole cooked pie, divide total calories by total grams, and you have your calories/gram....then weigh your slice(s) and multiply.
It sounds like a lot of hassle, unless you are committed to counting your calories accurately, and then it is somewhat worth it. Depending on my mood, I'll use the estimate method, or the "precise" weighing method (or no method at all!) :)
Hope that helps?
Rich
Hi Rich, thanks for your reply ?
I'm using Cronometer for tracking calories and I found all the toppings in their database like cooked mushrooms, bell peppers, red onions, etc. They do not have cooked half spelt, half white flour pizza crust in their database and I'm definitely using a scale and the weight of cooked pizza crust is different from raw pizza dough - or is it a negligible difference?
I would have to bake pizza separate from all toppings to find out baked pizza dough weight.
Cronometer has spelt bread and white bread, so I'm using that for pizza crust calories.
The whole pizza with toppings has 2073 calories and you can calculate calories for individual portions by weight (grams).
My approach was always to start with the calories of my raw ingredients. Since calories don't disappear when you cook the food, it seemed to me that was the best way to be as accurate as I could be.
I think that if I were trying to do what you are doing, I would estimate the weight lost during baking, which is generally agreed upon to be between 10-20%. My pea brain thinks that pizza probably loses less moisture during baking due to the toppings (I'm a history major, so this could be wildly inaccurate), so I'd go with 12%. Add the calories of the raw ingredients in your pizza dough together, and do the math to figure out cooked calories per gram with a 12% loss estimate. The remaining challenge you would have now is accurately measuring how much dough is in the slice you are eating (one of the reasons I do the weigh the whole cooked pie thing.) :)
Or, your simpler method of just using calories of cooked spelt and AP breads will work, too. Really it all depends on how accurate you wish to try to be. I don't think you'll find a source of information for calories of cooked flour, since flour it pretty much always cooked with or in something else, so you'll only get it as a component of the total calories in some sort of finished product.
Ultimately, any calorie counting exercise is an estimate. Get as close as you can within reason, stick to your calorie (macro, exercise, etc.) goals, and you will accomplish what you set out to.
Rich
PS: Wow, that was more of a brain teaser than I thought! Hope that makes some sense to someone! :)
I found this info:
Here is a list of common weight loss (moisture lost with baking) percentages:
Baguette 1.10 lb. (500g) 17%
Artisan breads proofed in reed basket 10%
Artisan bread regular proof in dry box 12%
Pullman Pan bread 1.10 lb. (500g) 9%
Pan bread, no cover 10%
Rolls & Buns 20%
https://www.schoolofbaking.com/dough-tips.html
No info for pizza dough - though ?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a calorie measuring machine just by taking a photo of the food in our plates? ?
If your pizza dough is basically flour and water then all the calories are in the flour and any weight loss will be from moisture loss - maybe a little from maillard reaction if you like your pizza well cooked, but that should be minimal. I would calculate your calories based on the calorie content of your uncooked flour. Trying to be any more accurate than a 1/6th slice of pizza having 1/6th of the calories from the flour is probably pointless as toppings, cooking time and method and potentially atmospheric conditions could all affect moisture loss to a degree.