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Hey there, welcome back to another video.
I'm Baker Bettie and today we are going to talk about baker's percentages.
Now I know when I start talking about math sometimes that can kind of scare people off.
But I hope you stick with me today because I'm really going to try to break this down
and keep it super simple.
So if you aren't familiar with the topic of baker's percentages, this is a technique that
typically professional bakers use to calculate the formula of a recipe.
It can be used for really any type of recipe, but it's really specifically used for bread
baking.
And it can be really helpful for even home bakers to learn this technique to be able
to better understand recipe formulas and to be able to adjust them as needed.
So baker's percentages are a way of calculating the formula of a recipe where each ingredient
is given a percentage and that number represents how much of that ingredient is in the recipe
in relation to the amount of flour in the recipe.
So where this can often get confusing for people, is typically when we see a percentage,
we see that number a percent of a whole.
However, in this method, the percent is a ratio to the amount of flour.
So however much flour is in the recipe, that amount is always set to 100%.
And we're talking about weights here.
It's really important to calculate these from weight measurements rather than volume measurements.
So after you know the weight of the flour, each ingredient can be calculated in relation
to that weight.
So you will take the weight of the ingredient you are calculating, divide it by the amount
of the flour, and then you're going to multiply that number by 100 and you get your baker's
percentage.
So I always like to start out with this really easy example of a pound cake.
And if you've done a lot of baking you know that the most basic recipe for a pound cake
calls for a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs, and a pound of flour.
So all of the ingredients weigh exactly the same amount.
So since our flour is set at 100% at one pound which is equivalent to 450 grams, every other
ingredient is also going to equal 100% when represented in baker's percentages.
Because those weights are equal.
Okay so now let's look at a really basic bread recipe and see if we can figure out the percentages
together.
So here we have 1000 grams of flour.
And again, that is going to be set at 100% no matter what the weight of the flour is.
Now we also have 10 grams of yeast, 20 grams of salt, and 700 grams of water.
So when we start comparing these ingredient amounts to our flour we can come up with our
baker's percentage formula.
So when I calculate my 10 grams of yeast, 10 divided by 1000 times 100, I get 1%.
When I do the same for my salt, I get 2%.
And when I do the same for my water I get 70%.
So now you can see this is our baker's percentage formula for this recipe.
And this formula can now be used to make this recipe in any size.
So if you need to scale this recipe up or down, this formula is very helpful in doing
that.
I also find these formula really helpful to compare to other recipes.
WhenI really like a quality in one bread recipe for instance, maybe I really like how moist
the interior texture is, sometimes it's really helpful to look at that in comparison to other
recipes to see what might be causing that difference.
Okay so now let's look at the formula going the other way.
Say we are only given these percentages and we need to come up with the amounts that we're
going to use in our recipe.
So again, in baker's percentages flour is always set at 100% and in this formula again
our yeast is still at 1%, our salt is at 2%, because those are both really standard amounts
for a bread recipe.
But this time our water is at 65% rather than 70%.
So we know this dough is going to be a little dryer than our last dough we calculated for
our recipe.
So to calculate it going the other way, where we have these percentages and we're trying
to find out our amounts, we're going to decide how much flour we're going to start with.
So this can take some practice just to get used to how much you're going to need for
a recipe.
But for a recipe where you want maybe 2 loaves of bread, 1000 grams is a pretty good place
to start.
So now what we need to do to calculate the rest of the ingredients is to multiply 1000
by each of these percentages.
So remember when you're multiplying by a percentage, you do need to move the decimal place by two
points.
So for our 1% we are going to multiply 1000 by .01 and that will give us 10 grams for
our yeast.
Now for our salt we're going to multiply 1000 by .02 which will give us 20 grams, and for
our water we're going to multiply it by .65 which will give us 650 grams of water.
Now I do want to do one more example for those of you who are sourdough bakers because there
is something else to keep in mind when people talk about the hydration of a loaf.
So when people talk about hydration in bread dough, they are talking about the amount of
water in the dough in relation to the flour.
However, when you're baking with sourdough, the amount of water that actually goes into
the recipe is not the percentage of the hydration because you do need to calculate the water
from the starter.
So this can get a little bit more confusing for people.
So let's look at an example.
So here we have a really standard sourdough formula.
We have our flour set at 100%, like always.
And for our starter we have 20%, the water is at 70%, and the salt is at 2%.
So let's do our calculations.
WE're going to put the flour at 1000 grams.
And for our starter this is going to put us at 200 grams, when you multiply 1000 by .2
for our 20%.
Our water is going to be 700 grams, and our salt is going to be 20 grams.
Now if you were to look at this formula and want to know what the final hydration of this
dough is, you need to account for the fact that your starter is half water and half flour.
So 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water needs to be calculated in your final hydration
formula because we have 200 grams of starter in our dough.
So stick with me here, I know this gets a little bit confusing.
But when we calculate this percentage, instead of 1000 grams as our 100% we're actually going
to base it on 1100 grams because our starter has 100 grams of flour in it.
And then instead of calculating they hydration based on 700 grams of water in the dough,
we're actually going to calculate it based on 800 grams of water because there is 100
grams of water in our starter.
So while our baker's percentage formula showed that we were putting 70% water into our dough,
the actual final hydration of this dough is 72% when you do that math.
800 divided by 1100 times 100 gives us 72%.
Now for most basic sourdough baking this is not something to really dwell on.
But if you are really interested in getting in depth into sourdough baking and you are
looking at the percentages and the hydration of your dough, this is something that's important
to note.
So I know today's video was a little more technical.
I hope you found it helpful if baker's percentages are something you are interested in learning.
This is a really helpful thing if you are somebody who would like to start developing
your own recipes.
You can take recipes you like, work out the formulas for yourself and that is a great
way to start tweaking as you see fit.
As always I'm happy to answer any of your questions you can leave those down in the
comment section.
And I'm actually going to leave a formula in the description of this video if you want
to try your hand at working out the percentages for yourself, you can leave those in the comment
section so we can see how you did.
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