19 Comments
Oct 22, 2020Liked by Andrew Janjigian

Yay! Baker's math FINAL clicked for me, like, last month. Now when I read these "lessons" I am so thrilled to connect the dots... Thank you for posting!

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Oct 22, 2020Liked by Andrew Janjigian

You are a bread god!

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Oct 22, 2020Liked by Andrew Janjigian

Thanks for such a clear and concise explanation!

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So with preferments or porridges how do you account for the amount of water which has evaporated? In the case of porridges like oatmeal, a significant amount of the water was boiled off in the cooking process.

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This is more of a theoretical question than a practical one, but I am curious. Can typical home-cookbook recipes for a couple loaves of bread really be scaled up successfully to bakery proportions of dough? It just seems like, notwithstanding the correct use of percentages, yeast and salt (or other ingredients) might need further adjustment for really large quantities. I don’t plan on scaling up my go-to ATK Wheat with Rye and Wheat Germ recipe to 100 loaves, but wondered how the yeast, especially, would respond.

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It looks like past me was correct. I used to count 50% of the levain as flour weight and 50% of it as water weight in my recipe when calculating hydration. Then I counted the levain as a separate entity because some bread bakers do it and for simplicity. Now I might change it once again.

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Jun 9, 2021Liked by Andrew Janjigian

Chiming in long after the fact with a question: I'm confused about how the water and flour comprising the levain are factored into the total. If I'm using a levain of, say, 50g flour and 50g water, do I reduce the amounts of flour and water in my formula by 50g each to account for those ingredients in the levain?

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I think it would be helpful (both here and in future editions of your pocket companion) to show an example of converting from percentages for a recipe containing a preferment. I just had to do it and was able to figure out our, but was initially frustrated that there was extra math I didn't know about! :)

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