![]() ![]() On further reflection, I’m not at all convinced that this would work even remotely with volume measurements. No, I believe you’re right, Susan, I shouldn’t even think about confusing the issue by calling a violin a tuba and expect people to even begin to understand what I mean. In the meantime, in case you want to be as geeky as me, click here for a few practice exercises. ![]() ![]() I’ll be back in a few days with another installment, for those who would like to know more about what to do with all these percentages now that you can calculate them. Notice that the percentages of the flours always add up to 100% (56% + 44%). Again, look at each ingredient to find its percentage relative to the total 900 g: The total amount of flour is 900 g (500 g white flour + 400 g whole wheat flour). If the formula has more than one type of flour, it’s only slightly more complicated. Note that the BP by itself doesn’t tell us the absolute amount of each ingredient (that will depend on how much dough we want to make), but does tell us the ratio of each ingredient to the main ingredient, flour. Then move the decimal point two places to the right ![]() Ingredient weight divided by total flour weight We want to know how much of that ingredient there is, relative to the 500 g of flour. Now we’ll convert this recipe to a BP formula.įirst we note the total amount of flour in the recipe: 500 g. You can use ounces, pounds, whatever, as long as the units are consistent for all ingredients. (Note that the amount of each ingredient is specified in grams. Let’s say we are making a simple white bread with the following ingredients. (You may want to grab a calculator that’s not cheating.) OK, it seems you’re still with me, so let’s consider a straightforward example. If you don’t weigh your ingredients, and my rant-cum-post on the subject a couple of weeks ago didn’t convince you, stop reading now BP will not be useful to you. Now don’t panic, we’re going to break this down into simple steps.įirst, though, I need to emphasize how critical the “by weight” part is. So, what is this Baker’s Percentage? It’s a way of listing the ingredients in a recipe (formula) where the amount of each ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total amount of flour in the recipe, by weight. understand how professional (and many amateur) bakers talk about their formulas.make an educated guess about the kind of bread you’ll get from a formula.quickly discern whether the ingredients in a given formula seem to be balanced.easily scale recipes to make the exact amount of dough you need.With a grasp of BP and a bit of knowledge about basic dough formula parameters, you can: It turns out that this convention, which to my knowledge is unique to bread bakers, is both straightforward and useful. Reinhart is a rock star baker and he’s managed to get quite a few books published just maybe he knows a little more than you do about this, my dear. This was followed pretty quickly by a second thought: Mr. My first thought: Huh? Wow, this fellow really needs a math lesson. I saw these weird sidebar versions of all the recipes in which the total of the ingredients always added up to more than 100%. My first brush with Baker’s Percentage (BP) came a few days after baking my first loaves, as I was perusing my newly-acquired copy of Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Did I just strike fear in your heart? No doubt about it, this can be confusing, even scary, stuff. If you bake bread, sooner or later you’re going to encounter (cue ominous music) Baker’s Percentage. ![]()
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