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Baker's Math (2009)

thefreshloaf.com

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Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#61

Post by sneak »

mcaravey wrote: post #50

Commercial baker here. One place where this kind of math gets really weird is when the recipe uses multiple kinds of flours. We make a loaf that uses three kinds of flour, so this means a recipe will have flour percentages that are less than 100%, but that sum to 100% so the hydration percentage works. For example, the recipe might say: Bread Flour 80%, Whole Wheat Flour 15%, and Rye Flour 5%. Personally I prefer jus…

This, at $500, stretches even my credulity, even as a collector of books, lover of bread, and owner of books about bread.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#62

Post by jameshart »

sentrysapper wrote: post #46
jameshart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the abuse here? This seems like ‘math’ to me.

As in it goes against the designed usage (where total is 100%), but it still works. The total ingredients being 170% can be found confusing initially. I'm glad the author provided more context and the example of a 500g flour recipe.

Why does the total have to be 100%?

Do all fractions have to add to 1?

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#63

Post by emadabdulrahim »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #55

I’m surprised how something so basic as learning that baking recipes are ratios of mass makes me feel more comfortable and inclined to try baking than anything ever has before. It’s such a simple concept, and much more approachable to me than I’d expected before I clicked the link.

Same. I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the math and the usefulness of it.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#64

Post by mcaravey »

sophacles wrote: post #56
mcaravey wrote: post #50

Commercial baker here. One place where this kind of math gets really weird is when the recipe uses multiple kinds of flours. We make a loaf that uses three kinds of flour, so this means a recipe will have flour percentages that are less than 100%, but that sum to 100% so the hydration percentage works. For example, the recipe might say: Bread Flour 80%, Whole Wheat Flour 15%, and Rye Flour 5%. Personally I prefer jus…

Neat! Im curious - were you in tech before becoming a baker at all, or did you pick up the programming skills to help your baking career? I ask because I'm always interested in hearing how non-programmers end up programming. I've long held the opinion that we (tech that is) should try to make things more programmable by users (e.g. game scripting, excel, the "citizen developer" world of sharepoint), etc and like to h…

Oh, I do software by trade. The bakery is because it started as a family business that I helped get off the ground. My background is in B2B payments and construction software. Even though the bakery doesn’t make as much money as software, there’s a whole other world of experience to be gained by running a blue collar business that runs 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. Very very different that a software shop.

But to your point, most ERP planning software for bakeries sucks badly, like really badly. One of the prominent ones you can purchase today runs off a JET database from the 90s, with the “cloud” version just being Citrix access to a VM. but they all seem to universally require you to print out paper every day for every shift, so a ton of people just fall back on Excel (using bakers math) to pan production, daily. My software runs on an iPad that is kept at each station for kind of shift, and it spits out packing sheets and invoices from Quickbooks, and integrates with our delivery route planner. It would be a full time job to be calculating everything from mix quantities to how to pack the final product, without mistakes, 7 days a week.

There definitely needs to be better tools for the lay-person though. None of my staff can make changes to our custom software, but also it is basically impossible to recreate it with low/no-code tools. Hence Excel…

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#65

Post by mcaravey »

sneak wrote: post #61
mcaravey wrote: post #50

Commercial baker here. One place where this kind of math gets really weird is when the recipe uses multiple kinds of flours. We make a loaf that uses three kinds of flour, so this means a recipe will have flour percentages that are less than 100%, but that sum to 100% so the hydration percentage works. For example, the recipe might say: Bread Flour 80%, Whole Wheat Flour 15%, and Rye Flour 5%. Personally I prefer jus…

This, at $500, stretches even my credulity, even as a collector of books, lover of bread, and owner of books about bread.

Yeah, it was an investment for sure. But it has allowed us to save a ton of time every day (e.g. save 30 minute on the autolyse), make tweaks to our recipes to match our processes, change our starters (use stiff levain instead of poolish for certain breads), and a bunch of other details. Not needed for the lay-person. For sourdough I’d opt for the Tartine books.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#66

Post by travisjungroth »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #42
travisjungroth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article doesn’t have any sources and I’m hesitant to take it as a primary source. A blog isn’t an encyclopedia, even with the same name. Also doesn’t pass some cursory thinking. If the law is about loaves being too light or small, how does giving out an extra loaf to people who buy 12 help? Who is even buying 12 loaves of bread when restaurants are rare and refrigeration non-existent? Armies, but then they’re bu…

> If the law is about loaves being too light or small, how does giving out an extra loaf to people who buy 12 help? If the baker gives you 13 and calls it 12, that makes it harder for a greedy baker narrative to stick. It doesn't have to be logical, it's about managing impressions. > Who is even buying 12 loaves of bread when restaurants are rare and refrigeration non-existent? The average family used to be the size…

It doesn’t add up that it would just be about managing impressions or controlling a narrative. The fact that there was a law regulating the price of loaves of bread is well recorded. Anyone selling loaves too small but also selling baker’s dozen would be in violation.

I regret trying to say buying a dozen would be uncommon. It’s more that even if they sell a dozen, of course there’d frequently be orders smaller than that.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#67

Post by mcaravey »

quag wrote: post #57
mcaravey wrote: post #50

Commercial baker here. One place where this kind of math gets really weird is when the recipe uses multiple kinds of flours. We make a loaf that uses three kinds of flour, so this means a recipe will have flour percentages that are less than 100%, but that sum to 100% so the hydration percentage works. For example, the recipe might say: Bread Flour 80%, Whole Wheat Flour 15%, and Rye Flour 5%. Personally I prefer jus…

It’s a small world. One of my friends worked on those books. We enjoyed a few years eating test bread every time we saw them.

Nice, I’d love to have participated in their testing processes. They obviously treated it like a science and questioned a ton of institutional wisdom, and the results were fantastic.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#68

Post by Woodi »

We call it here in Poland "baker's percentage" - how much ingradients are needed for 100 kg of summed flours.

Eg: recipe for "plain bread" can be:

- 60 - 70 kg wheat flour

- 40 - 30 kg rye flour

- 1.5 - 2 kg yeasts

- 1.8 - 1.5 kg of salt

- 0.x potato starch for keeping loafs unsticked, etc

No water in recipe: a) it's assumed 50% of flour weight (1 liter of water equals to 1kg); b) around 40 years ago cost of 50 l of water was less then 0.01 zł so it didn't show in price calculations.

Very often (in loafs with rye flour) there can be no rye flour addition at all - all rye flour is added as sourdough (water and rye flour, 50-50), amounts need to be adjusted.

Now, for ingradients for recipe in column one we have: 100 + 1.5 + 1.8 + 0.x + 50 (water) what gives 153.x kg of raw dough. But after baking and storing it some water evaporates so total weight of finished product is less then 153.x kg, maybe 135 kg, maybe 128 kg - depends on loaf weight - bigger loaf then less water evaporates. That number is called "efficiency" of the recipe, you can read it in industry standards books for given loaf weight or measure yourself by test baking. It is used to calculate product price/order or ingradients for given order.

That method is industry standard, we try to teach it to a journeymans. If only they didn't have problems with basic %'s... H_2O ? What's that ? NaCl ? Forget it. Seriously, what teachers in basic schools are doing ??

Confectioners do not use that method, they sum everything and substract wastes.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#69

Post by eps »

mcaravey wrote: post #50

Commercial baker here. One place where this kind of math gets really weird is when the recipe uses multiple kinds of flours. We make a loaf that uses three kinds of flour, so this means a recipe will have flour percentages that are less than 100%, but that sum to 100% so the hydration percentage works. For example, the recipe might say: Bread Flour 80%, Whole Wheat Flour 15%, and Rye Flour 5%. Personally I prefer jus…

> the Modernist Bread set. It’s pricey...

$625 is not "pricey", it's ridiculuously expensive.

Re: Baker's Math (2009)

#70

Post by eps »

mcaravey wrote: post #65
sneak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, at $500, stretches even my credulity, even as a collector of books, lover of bread, and owner of books about bread.

Yeah, it was an investment for sure. But it has allowed us to save a ton of time every day (e.g. save 30 minute on the autolyse), make tweaks to our recipes to match our processes, change our starters (use stiff levain instead of poolish for certain breads), and a bunch of other details. Not needed for the lay-person. For sourdough I’d opt for the Tartine books.

Autolyse probably is not the best example. I have several bread-making books and I don't think a single one advocates for autolyse. Not Tartine, not Forkish's, not Reinhart's. Lots of youtubers and bloggers love it though, no idea why.
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