Some will simply use quantities (and for a beginner that’s the easiest to follow), some will also use percentages alongside. Using % comes handy whenever you want to scale up or down, make smaller or larger loaves.
How do percentages work – the simple way
The amount of flour will always be the reference point.
Should you want to make a smaller loaf instead, start with the amount of flour in mind and use % to figure out the amount of water, starter and salt required.
For example: 400g flour will required 280g water (70% out of 400g), 80g starter (20%) and 8g salt (2%)
The amount of water in a recipe is also called dough hydration
The easy way to calculate dough hydration is by dividing the amount of water in the recipe to the amount of flour, as described above.
There is however a more accurate way of doing it, which you may encounter in some recipes.
When to use it?
Calculation
Hydration %
Simple way
Always a 100% hydration starter or leaven
350g water (in recipe) / 500g flour (in recipe)
70%
Accurate way
Different starter feedings/ leaven preparation
350g water (in recipe) +50g water (in starter) / 500g flour (in recipe) + 50g flour (in starter)
72.7%
Now, which one should you use?
Since I always feed my starter with equal parts of water and flour (also called 100% hydration), I prefer keeping it simple.You may want to do the same.
However, if for example, you were to use a stiffer starter instead (fed with more flour than water), then the more advanced calculation is more suitable.
This is more precise if you want to keep the dough at the same hydration as if you were to use a 100% hydration starter. With a stiffer starter, you will have to increase the amount of water in the dough, should you want the results to be the same
Baker's percentage is a way to represent the ingredients of a recipe in relation to the amount of flour in the recipe. The flour is set at 100% and the ingredient weights (water, salt, yeast, sourdough starter, oil…etc) are divided by the flour weight to determine what percentage they are of the flour weight.
At its core, baker's percentages are easy enough to understand: In any recipe, the total weight of the flour always equals 100%. The weight of every other ingredient then is a percentage of that flour weight. Those percentages are then combined to calculate the total percentage of a given dough.
To determine the percentage of the other ingredients, we divide the weight of each one by the weight of the flour, and then multiply the result (which is in decimal form) by 100 to convert it to a percent. It is worth noting that by simply looking at the percentages we can ascertain important things about this bread.
The easier version of baker's math does not include the weight of the flour and water contained in your sourdough starter when calculating percentages. The slightly more complicated version takes the amount of flour and water in the starter into account when calculating the percentages.
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