I was responding to a question on RecipeZaar.com about flour weights based on volumes, and ended up writing this tutorial on Baker's Percentages. So I saved it and thought I would share it with the bread bakers here.

Baker’s Percentages Revealed

Flour weights based on volumes are only approximations, and should not be taken as gospel. What the flour weight actually is, is the main ingredient in your bread formula. Formula? Yes, professional bakers make batches of dough based on a formula, and that formula is derived from some basic math called "Baker's Percentages." In a nutshell, all ingredients in a bread formula are a percentage of the flour weight (the flour weight being 100%), and through some quick calculations, you can determine EXACTLY how much of each ingredient is required to make a batch of dough. If, for example, you wanted to make 10 loaves of French bread weighing 1.5# each, you would back into the formula using nothing more than division and multiplication on a basic calculator. It sounds complicated, but once you learn how to do it, you can look at a recipe from someone else, and be able to determine if the dough will be lean or slack based on the % of water or other liquid in the formula. You will also know if it will rise quickly or slowly by the % of yeast in the formula, and whether it will have good flavor based on the % of salt. Here’s a simple formula for plain white bread or French bread:

Flour = 100%
Salt = 2%
Instant yeast = 1%
Water = 59%

Total ingredients are 100 + 2 +1 + 59 = 162%

So if you just had 2# (32 oz.) of flour to work with to make bread, you would do the following math:

Salt is total flour weight x 2% or .02
32 x .02 = .64 oz. of salt

Instant yeast is total flour weight x 1% or .01
32 x .01 = .32 oz. of Instant yeast

Water is total flour weight x 59% or .59
32 x .59 = 18.88 oz of water.

Add them all together and you get:
32 + .64 + .32 + 18.88 = 51.84 oz of dough, that would make two loaves weighing 25.92 oz. each, or 1# 9.92 oz. each.

Now let's say you wanted two loaves of bread weighing 1# 8oz. each, for a total of 3# of finished dough (48 oz. of dough). You would do the following math to determine how much flour you needed:

Total flour =(Total dough weight divided by total percentage) x 100
(48 oz. ÷ 162) = .2963 x 100 = 29.63 oz

Now that you have your flour weight, just follow the percentage listed above.

Flour is 29.63 oz.
Salt is 29.63 x .02 = .59 oz.
Instant yeast is 29.63 x .01 = .30 oz.
Water is 29.63 x .59 = 17.48 oz.

29.63 + .59 + .30 + 17.48 = 48 oz of dough.

This comes in handy when you want to make something like hamburger rolls . If you need to make 20 hamburger rolls and want them to be 2.75 oz. each, do the following:

20 x 2.75 = 55 oz. of dough
Then take (55 oz ÷ 162) x 100 = 33.95 oz of flour. Then just multiply the salt, yeast and water by their percentage, and you will get a repeatable recipe every time. The percentages may vary a bit based on how a particular baker want their dough, but if someone gave you just the percentages of the ingredients in their formula, you could calculate the flour and all the other ingredients just from determining how much finished dough you wanted to have.

For another tutorial on Baker’s Percentages, go to: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/03/22 ... centage-1/

Wow Joe! That is some really useful information. I just need to wrap it around my head first. It sort of makes sense to me but I'll have to read it over a couple more times.

Thank you for doing this!! Would you mind if I made this a sticky?? I think others would be interested in this.

Thanks again.

Awesome Joe! Thanks for adding the great content.

-John

By all means. It's a good reference tool. I actually printed this out a long time ago and have it in my cooking/baking binder at the back of the bread section.