Bakers Percentage

[dmgood]

Hi,

I understand how the Bakers Percentage is great for comparing recipes, determining hydration and scaling.  Can you tell me what the significance would be (if any) of comparing the Total percentage of two recipes?  Would it be just that one has more ingredients in it than the other?  Or is there any other significance to the Total percentage number?

Thanks!

[weemis]

the total percentage of a recipe relates to the final weight of the dough. for example, a higher hydration recipe would have more weight than a lower hydration recipe with the same amount of flour.

[TXCraig1]

You might have a reason to add up several component percentages - for example, someone might add the % water and the % oil as sort of an "effective hydration" reference point. I would say that the Total Percentage (defined as all ingredient %'s including the flour at 100%) is a pretty meaningless number, however. The only thing I can think of that you might do with it is use it to see how much flour you needed in your formula. If you take the total amount of dough you want to make and divide it by the Total Percentage, the result will be the amount of flour to use.

[The Dough Doctor]

The significance of the total percentage comes in with more advanced use of bakers percent/bakers math. For example, lets say your formula has a total percentage of 171%, if you have calculated that you need 10-pounds of dough to make something all you need to do is to divide the dough weight by the total percent. Move the decimal point two places to the left and divide: 10-pounds divided by 1.72 = 5.84-pounds of flour will be needed to make 10-pounds of dough by your dough formula. Another way to use it is to calculate how much dough you can make from a known quantity of flour. Again, our total formula percent is 171%. We have 6-pounds of flour, how much dough can I make? 1.71 X 6-pounds = 10.26-pounds of dough can be made from my 6-pounds of flour by my formula.
Here is another one, if I know your formula in bakers percent, and I add the percentages and get 162%, and I know that you made 7-pounds of dough, I can calculate how much flour you used, then I can make the very same size dough. 7-pounds divided by 1.62 = 4.32-pounds of flour were used in making the dough. Now I can calculate the amounts of each of the other ingredients to make the dough (this is just like the first example above).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[Pete-zza]

I understand how the Bakers Percentage is great for comparing recipes, determining hydration and scaling.  Can you tell me what the significance would be (if any) of comparing the Total percentage of two recipes?  Would it be just that one has more ingredients in it than the other?  Or is there any other significance to the Total percentage number?

Thanks!

dmgood,

You might go over to the forum's expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html and, using the dough weight option, play around with different sets of numbers and see what effects the changes produce.

Peter

[dmgood]

Thanks, everyone.  It's a lot to think about.  I really like concept of the baker percentage.  The tool is great.  It helps in better understanding the many variations in dough.