BREAD BAKERS PERCENTAGES HOW TO

Here’s the thing, if you are like me, where mental maths is not a forte, then a calculator is your best friend when making & baking bread and using the Baker’s Percentage. Scaling is not about doubling or tripling or halving a recipe necessarily.

The Baker’s Percentage also allows you to scale your bread to the quantities of dough you require for a given batch of dough ingredients. However, when the penny did drop, baking bread has become an even greater pleasure and joy! Once I understood this concept, I discovered that I did not need a “bread recipe”. What is more important to understand are the “proportions” required for different ingredients when making bread. It was difficult because I was figuring it out by myself. It took me quite a while to get my head around it properly. Which is as it should be.One of the most confusing concepts in my bread making journey has been the “Baker’s Percentage”. And as you can see in the graph below, the relative values are exactly the same in the final recipe as in the first one. For 10 loaves of 700 g each the recipe by weight is then - step 9: Which makes absolutely no difference in practice. So the recipe is hard to read, and it is implied that it is important that you use 2,865 g flour and not 2,866 g. These numbers has a precision that is not needed and looks confusing. Then we just need to multiply all the ingredients with the weight per percentage: All ingredients are calculated like this - step 8: What this number says it that each percentage point in the recipe corresponds to 38.2 g.Ģ46 oz / 183.2% = 1.34 oz/% each percentage point in the recipe corresponds to 1.34 oz. If we need 10 loaves of 700 g we can get the recipe in grams like this:ħ000 g / 183.2% = 38.2 g/%. We just need to find out how much weight each percentage point each corresponds to, and then multiply with that. (2 lbs) which is a very normal weight for a large loaf of bread.Īn advantage of the bakers percentage is that it is easy to calculate new weights for other amounts of bread. When knowing total percentage (tp) and the total flour weight (tfw) is possible to calculate the total weight of the bread by the formula: So to add it up: total percentage (tp) = 75 +25 +2.8 +80 +0.4 = 183.2% The total weight (tw) - Step 7 But this way of doing it has the advantage that it is easier to compare recipes. That the total percentage is not 100% as one would assume when adding all ingredients in a recipe. This is the part that makes the lest sense in bakers percentage. You don't usually do this, but it might visualise the principle better. Tfw= 375 g wheat flour + 125 g spelt flour = 500 g total flourĪt this stage we can compare the amounts directly. But it is unusable for calculating the bakers percentage.įirst, we need to convert all the ingredient values into weight - Step 2 This is perfectly normal, and is often used to make the measurements faster in a home kitchen. The above recipe use a mix of weight and volume: gram, dl (100 ml), tsp, pea. The rest of the ingredients of the recipe are then calculated in relation to that total weight. Any flour whatsoever and you add them together and find the total weight. This includes whole flour, flour kernels, whole wheat, rye flour, etc etc. You calculate any ingredients 'percentage' relative to the total amount of flour in the recipe. Then the calculations will be all the same. The important thing is that you just use one unit. If you find that confusing then just think of gram (g) as ounce (oz). In the examples below I use the metric system. You can easily change a small part of the recipe in an educated manner and see what effect it has.

You will get an instinctive feel for any bread recipe. You'll get easier overview of 'patterns' in your recipes so you understand bread better.It's easier to remember recipes as a percentage formula since they are the same regardless of the amount of bread and the size of the loaf.You can easily convert a recipe if you need to make 25 bread instead of 20.

BREAD BAKERS PERCENTAGES HOW TO

You also have to use a bit of math to figure out how to mix your own breads. Baker's percentage formula can be a somewhat confusing because you do not end up at 100% when you add all the percentages together.

Bread bakers percentages