What is Baker’s Math?
Everyone has at some point made a batch of cookies. But most people have never gone through the amount of effort that professional bakers put into their craft. While a professional will make a larger variety of goodies, they also bake for far larger crowds than you'll see at a kitchen table. But don't feel too bad for the bakers. They have a secret weapon that helps them convert their tasty recipes into volumes that can feed a kingdom: baker's math.
The Basics of Baker's Math
As long as you have an understanding of how to multiply, divide, and work with percentages, then baker's math will be a valuable tool anytime you need to bake an amount of bread or pastries that goes beyond the standard loaf or dozen. To start, we'll look at the recipe for a basic loaf of French bread:
- 3 cups of flour
- 2 cups of water
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/4 ounces of active, dry yeast
To convert this recipe into baker's percentages, you start by considering the volume of flour as the baseline for all other measurements, shown as 100%. For the algebraically inclined, the volume of flour will be the variable that gives value to all other portions of the equation.
Finding the percentage for water is relatively simple as they share units, dividing to a value of 66.6%. The salt and yeast, on the other hand, require converting the measurements to cups before dividing. When you finish the conversions, the baker's math version of the basic French bread recipe reads as:
- 100% of flour
- 66.6% of water
- 2% of salt
- 1% of active, dry yeast
Why Do Baker's Use This Style of Math?
The amounts used in the original French bread recipe are relatively easy to work with for both amateur and professional bakers, but baking in a commercial environment requires making much more than just a single loaf at a time. As the number of loaves necessary to fill the order goes up, the measurements begin to become unwieldy when starting from a standard recipe. For example, making 1,000 loaves would require 1,000 teaspoons of salt, requiring a conversion of the units to cups to avoid the hassle of adding the salt just one teaspoon at a time. It becomes even more difficult as you add in ingredients with odd shapes or differing sizes.
By using the baker's percentages, the ingredients can be measured by weight instead of by volume, which cuts down dramatically on the time spent putting the recipe together. Combined with greater ease of scaling the recipe up and down based on the order size, percentages make the lives of professional bakers exponentially easier (get it?)
Working with Baker's Math
Our resident baker, Tonya, is getting ready to prepare enough loaves of French bread for the other chefs to turn into a selection of gourmet sandwiches for party-goers at a catered event. She knows that the cooks will be cutting each loaf into two sections each, and the client has ordered 500 sandwiches for the event. Tonya knows it takes roughly 3 cups of flour per loaf, so she multiplies this by the 250 loaves she will need to make to find the total flour necessary is 750 cups.
Rather than measuring out 750 cups in one cup increments, she knows that 3.5 cups of flour is roughly equal to a pound. Multiplying 750 cups by the 1 pound to 3.5 cups ratio gives her 214.3 pounds of flour, which she can measure in bulk using the kitchen's scale. Using similar methods, she can quickly grab the necessary amounts of water, salt, and yeast. All that's left is for her to mix them together with the aid of the heavy duty mixing equipment, divide the appropriate amount of mix into each pan, and get to baking!
Baker's Math for Baking Professionals
Knowing how to convert a recipe into baker's percentages and use them to create the perfect amount of flaky, delicious treats is just one step on the path to becoming a professional baker. If you've got a sweet tooth that you dream of sharing with the world, then you may be ready to start earning a Baking and Pastry Arts diploma from ECPI University. Contact an ECPI University today for more information about this exciting (and delicious!) field of study.
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