I don't understand the pizza recipes. Help!!

[spies]

Hey all!  So I'm very new to pizza dough making and I came across this site and several others and I don't understand how to read these recipes. Can someone explain how to read them. They all go something like this

100% flour
40% water
3% salt
.075% yeast

Or something like that. How much of each ingredient do I add?  How many cups/teaspoons or whatever does 100% mean. I've seen some of the pictures of the end result and the pizzas look great but I have no idea what those %'s mean. Any help appreciated. Thanks.

Shaun

[Pete-zza]

Shaun,

The baker's percents system is one primarily used by bakers. It is weight based, not volume based. Baker's percents allows one to scale a particular dough formulation up or down and to do other useful things. You might want to take a look at the King Arthur article at http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/bakerspercentage.pdf and also the multi-part tutorial at http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/03/22/bakers-percentage-1/. Both of these articles will teach you the rudiments of baker's percents.

Peter

EDIT (3/15/13): For the Wayback Machine link to the above King Arthur article, see http://web.archive.org/web/20090106001715/http://www.kingarthurflour.com//professional/bakerspercentage.pdf

[spies]

Awesome thanks!  One more question. I saw a lot of stuff regarding thickness factor. Is this just a measure in inches or something like that?

[norma427]

Shaun,

This is a thread started by Dave (dmcavanagh) recently about TF (thickness factor) http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,17813.msg172515.html#msg172515

Norma

[inclement nimbus]

Shaun,

The baker's percents system is one primarily used by bakers. It is weight based, not volume based. Baker's percents allows one to scale a particular dough formulation up or down and to do other useful things. You might want to take a look at the King Arthur article at http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/bakerspercentage.pdf and also the multi-part tutorial at http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/03/22/bakers-percentage-1/. Both of these articles will teach you the rudiments of baker's percents.

Peter

Hey Pete! Just wanted to say thanks for the links. I've been a little confused and this really helps

EDIT (3/15/13): For the Wayback Machine link to the King Arthur article on baker's percents, see http://web.archive.org/web/20060113150229/http://www.kingarthurflour.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/15ec5c94af1251cdac2d7a25848f0e27/miscdocs/bakerspercentage.pdf