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Re: Baker's Percentage

Mike Avery <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com>
Sun, 06 Feb 2005 21:25:02 -0700
v105.n006.5
"Valmai Barbala" <valmai@epc.net.au> asked:
>I have started to make the leaven on page 58 and understand that, but when 
>I have made the leaven, how do I calculate how much flour, water etc to 
>use? They write of Bakers percentage, but that only confuses me further.

Commercial bakers normally measure ingredients by weight.  At least in the 
USA, home bakers usually measure by volume, which is less 
accurate.  (Flour, and other dry ingredients, may not always pack the 
same.  So the weight of a cup of flour can vary by 50% depending on the 
flour, the humidity, how the flour was packed in the sack, and how the 
baker filled the cup.  Measuring by weight is faster and more accurate once 
you're used to it.)

In order to make recipe scaling easy, bakers use bakers percentage.  In 
bakers percentage, the flour is considered to be 100%.  All other 
ingredients are scaled relative to the flour.  If you are using more than 
one flour, you are free to wing it.  I prefer to consider the combined 
amount of flour to be 100%.  So, a baker's percentage recipe might call for:

Bread flour     100%
Water            65%
Salt              2%
Instant yeast    1.5%

The percentages are independent of the weight measurements you use... use 
metric (or SI), pounds, troy ounces, avoidopois, stones, whatever, it works 
regardless.  The ratios are independent of the weight system.

If you wanted to make 1685 grams of bread with the recipe above, you'd use
Ingredient      grams
Bread flour     1000
Water            650
Salt              20
Instant yeast     15

The ratio between the flour and water (and other liquids and oils) is the 
hydration of the dough.  This recipe is considered to have 65% 
hydration.  If the amount of flour and water is the same, the hydration is 
100%.  This gives you a ballpark guess as to the texture of the dough.

The big variable here is the kind(s) of flour used.  Whole grain flours 
tend to soak up more water than white flours, so a 80% hydration whole 
wheat dough and a 65% hydration white flour dough might be pretty 
simular.  (Those numbers were pulled out of the air to make a point, they 
are not being represented as being accurate or having any real world 
signifigance.)

As a final note on hydration, many bakers consider oil, butter, honey, 
eggs, or whatever to be water for the purpose of calculating 
hyrdation.  All of these things tend to act just like water for the 
purposes of dough handling.

Finally, I REALLY like "The Bread Builders".  However, I think any number 
of other books are better books for the beginning baker.  If you are at the 
intermediate level or beyond, it's excellent.  If you want to build a brick 
oven, it's great!  But, it isn't a great introduction to baking.  If you 
want to build an oven, you might also check out Kiko Denzer's earth oven 
book.  I have the book, but not here, and the title eludes me.  Look up 
Kiko Denzer at amazon or half.com, there seems to only be one 
Kiko.  [[Editor's note: <http://www.intabas.com/kikodenzer.html> ]]

If you want to get going on sourdough baking, you might check out Dr. Ed 
Wood's books, Jeffery Hammel's book, Ortiz's "The Village Baker", or even 
my guide to sourdough on my web page at 
http://www.sourdoughhome.com.  Another good resource is the 
rec.food.sourdough news group.

Good luck,
Mike