Baker’s Percentages: The Key to Better Pizza Making

Baker’s percentage is one of the most important concepts in baking; But what exactly are baker’s percentage, and how do you use it? This post aims to answer all of your general questions about baker’s percentages

Baker’s Percentages: Introduction

Before diving into baker’s percentages, it’s essential to understand a key principle about baking in general, and pizza baking in particular.

The quantity of each ingredient in the dough significantly impacts both the dough’s behavior and the final product. Even a slight variation of just a few grams in an ingredient like water, salt, or oil can lead to a dough with completely different properties – whether it’s stiffer, softer, stickier, or stretchier – and produce a noticeably different final result.

For example, using 1% versus 3% sugar, salt, or oil in the dough can result in vastly different outcomes. Similarly, a dough hydration level of 60% compared to 70% will produce entirely different dough characteristics.

Therefore, in baking, precision in the amount (weight) of each ingredient is crucial. This is where the concept of baker’s percentages comes into play, ensuring accuracy and consistency.

What Are Baker’s Percentages

Baker’s percentages are a fundamental mathematical tool that act as a ‘language’ for writing, analyzing, and comparing baking recipes. The concept is simple: flour is always the baseline for calculations and is set at 100%.

In other words, baker’s percentages set flour at 100% of the recipe, with all other ingredient amounts calculated relative to it.

For example, let’s take a look at the following recipe:

• 100g flour
• 60g water
• 2g salt
• 1g yeast

In order to convert this recipe to baker’s percentages, all we need to do is divide the weight of each ingredient by the weight of flour.

The recipe above, when expressed in baker’s percentages, will look like this:

• 100% flour (flour is always set to 100%)
• 60% water (‘dough hydration’) [60/100]
• 2% salt [2/100]
• 1% yeast [1/100]

Let’s try another example using a different recipe:

• 491g flour
• 314g water
• 15g salt
• 0.5g yeast

And in baker’s percentages:

• 100% flour
• 60% water [314/491]
• 3% salt [15/491]
• 0.1% yeast [0.5/491]

And that’s it – that’s all you need to know about baker’s percentages. At the end of this post, you will find the complete method for calculating baker’s percentages, but it is unnecessary to know it (for enrichment purposes only).

How to Use Baker’s Percentages

To easily use baker’s percentages, all you need to do is visit PizzaBlab’s dough calculator, enter the recipe numbers (percentages) in baker’s percentages, and you will promptly receive the required quantities (in grams) for each ingredient based on baker’s percentages.

Why Use Baker’s Percentages?

These are the main advantages of using baker’s percentages:

1. Scalability: Baker’s percentages allow us to adapt any recipe to any desired dough quantity since the percentages represent the ratio of each ingredient to the flour. This ensures that we can make consistent dough with the same properties, regardless of how much dough we make.

2. Flexibility: Baker’s percentages enable controlled changes to the recipe, making it easy to adjust ingredient ratios. For example, we can use 3% salt instead of 2%, or 62% water instead of 60%. These small adjustments can significantly affect the dough, allowing us to fine-tune recipes for specific outcomes.

3. Efficient Comparison and Sharing: Baker’s percentages provide an intuitive and efficient way to compare and share recipes. This system acts as a universal ‘language’ in the baking world, making it easy to replicate recipes at any scale. Unlike recipes with fixed or volumetric measurements, baker’s percentages allow us to scale up or down while maintaining the same dough characteristics.

4. Troubleshooting: Analyzing a recipe in baker’s percentages is the first step in troubleshooting dough issues. Because even slight percentage changes can impact the dough, understanding a recipe in baker’s percentages is key to identifying and resolving any potential problems.

As you can see, baker’s percentages are an invaluable tool for working accurately, achieving consistent results, and easily comparing and sharing recipes with others. This concept is essential – even if you’re just an amateur baker!

How to Calculate Baker’s Percentages

As mentioned, this section is for enrichment purposes only. Using PizzaBlab’s dough calculator eliminates the need to calculate baker’s percentages manually. However, if you’d like to learn how to calculate them yourself, here’s how:

1. Determine the Percentages of Ingredients
Assign each ingredient a percentage based on the weight of the flour, which is always set to 100%. Add up all the ingredient percentages to find the total percentage for the dough.

For example:

• Flour: 100%
• Water: 60%
• Salt: 2%
• Yeast: 1%

Total: 163%.

2. Calculate the Flour Weight
To determine how much flour you need, divide the desired dough weight by the total percentage.

Example:
If you want 500 grams of dough:
Flour weight = Desired dough weight / Total percentage
Flour weight = 500 / 1.63 = 306 grams.

3. Calculate the Weights of Other Ingredients
Once you know the flour weight, multiply it by each ingredient’s percentage (as a decimal) to find its weight.

Example:

• Water (60%): 306 × 0.60 = 184 grams
• Salt (2%): 306 × 0.02 = 6.1 grams
• Yeast (1%): 306 × 0.01 = 3.1 grams

By following these steps, you can accurately scale recipes to achieve consistent results. In the example above, 100% flour + 60% water + 2% salt + 1% yeast equals a total percentage of 163%.