As promised, this installment of the Baker’s Percentage Tutorial focuses on how to make a given amount of dough from a BP formula. I’ll also discuss how to make dough that uses a given amount of a certain ingredient.
If you didn’t catch Part 1 and Part 2 of this tutorial, you may want to do so before reading any further. I’m assuming that you’re familiar with what BP is and how to convert a recipe into a BP formula.
A couple of things are helpful to have before getting started: a calculator and a “math is fun” attitude. Smile and repeat after me: “Math. Is. Fun.”
Now consider this simple formula, expressd in BP:
- White flour 90%
- Whole wheat flour 10%
- Water 70%
- Instant yeast 1%
- Salt 2%
Let’s say we want to make 1100 grams of dough with this formula. (Note we’re talking about dough weight, not baked weight; some dough is lost to the bowl and your fingers, and some moisture weight is lost during baking.)
The first step is to add up all the percentages in the formula: 90% + 10% + 70% + 1% + 2 % = 173%.
This tells us that however much dough we make, we can think of it as being made up of 173 parts: 90 parts white flour, 10 parts whole wheat flour, 70 parts water, 1 part yeast, and 2 parts salt.
Now we want the whole package of 173 parts to weigh 1100 g, so each part must weigh 6.4 g (1100/173).
Recall that in any BP formula, the flour is always 100%. (If there is more than one type of flour, as here, the total of them is always 100%). In other words, no matter how many parts a formula is divided into, flour always accounts for exactly 100 of those parts.
So if each part weighs 6.4 g, and there are 100 parts of flour, then the total weight of the flour is 6.4 g x 100 = 640 g.
And now we’re home free, because in the BP world, Total Flour Weight rules. Once we know the TFW, the weight of each ingredient is a snap to calculate:
- White flour: 576 g (90% x 640 g)
- Whole wheat flour: 64 g (10% x 640 g)
- Water: 448 g (70% x 640 g)
- Yeast: 6.4 g (1% x 640 g)
- Salt: 12.8 g (2% x 640 g)
To summarize and generalize, if you have a BP formula and a desired dough weight, use these steps to calculate the amount of each ingredient:
- Add the percentages in the formula to get the Total %.
- Total Flour Weight = (Desired Dough Weight / Total %) x 100
- Multiply each ingredient’s percentage by Total Flour Weight to calculate the weight of that ingredient.
That wasn’t too bad, was it?
We can come at this from a slightly different angle if we we need to know how much dough we can make with a given amount of a particular ingredient.
Let’s say I want to make Semolina-Sesame Flatbreads, but I’m down to my last 14 g of sesame seeds, and I want to make as much dough as I can with that handful of seeds.
The recipe expressed as a BP formula is:
- White flour 50%
- Semolina 50%
- Water 57%
- Salt 2%
- Sesame seeds 7%
The sesame seeds account for 7 parts in the dough. I want those 7 parts to total 14 grams, so each part must weigh 2 g (14/7).
Because there are 100 parts of flour (always), the Total Flour Weight is 200 g (100 x 2 g). And you can take it from here, right?
Those of you who just can’t get enough math fun can try these exercises.
As always, questions are welcome and encouraged. However, please forgive me if I don’t respond right away; it’s time for a vacation! As I write this I’m Here, but by the time this is posted, I should be There, and I don’t know how much time I’ll get with the computer until I return.