![]() ![]() What’s most important to note is that we’re not talking about ingredient quantity by volume here: baking bread by weight is highly preferred, and much more accurate. Baker’s math is simply the process of calculating these percentages.Ĭonfused? Don’t worry, we’ll break it down together. Bread recipes are most easily written as a dough formula.Ī dough formula is a list of all ingredients needed to make a loaf of bread that can be quantified by weight, by baker’s percentage, or both. This is called scaling a recipe.įor the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on sourdough bread recipes, but the same information applies to yeasted bread. You can easily change the quantity of bread that you will end up with without changing the proportions of the recipe. You can quickly communicate facts about your dough formula with other bakers, and understand the formulas that other bakers are using. Rising times, crumb structure, and more information can be gleaned from these values. You can predict a bread’s behavior based on some of the percentages. ![]() Though initially I was lost, I grabbed my calculator and taught myself what those numbers mean and how to figure them out. My journey with baker’s math and the baker’s percentage started when I noticed other bakers on Instagram posting beautiful breads with all kinds of numbers beneath-72% hydration, 15% starter, etc. Now I bake sourdough, and I use math every day with joy. Then, I started doubling or halving recipes, which meant multiplying or dividing fractions, so I got a little bit more lenient on my whole “I hate math” thing. I used to cry during multiplication tests in the third grade because the numbers just didn’t make sense in my head or on my paper. I have to be honest: I did not enjoy math until I started baking with it. ![]()
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