FAQ for alt.bread.recipes

Analyzing a recipe

Recipes come from many sources, and a lot of them contain errors of various kinds. Before you tackle a recipe that is new to you, you should sit down with pencil and paper (or your analytic tools of choice) and examine the recipe carefully. This is true even if the recipe is in a book that is well reviewed in this FAQ.

A recipe consists of two components, the formula and the procedure. The first check you should do is to verify that the ingredients mentioned in the procedure match the formula. Often an ingredient is omitted one place or the other, and it is best to know this before you try to make the bread.

Next you should read through the recipe to look for clues to its true age and to the level of bread making knowledge of the author or editor. For example, an instruction to proof the yeast indicates that either the recipe has simply been copied from an old source or that the author or editor has the mistaken impression that this is a necessary step. Old recipes get corrupted in a number of ways. An old recipe that instructs you to use "a lump of butter the size of a hen's egg" might have been updated over the years to require 4 1/2 T. (tablespoons) of butter. And the next person to copy it may have transcribed that incorrectly as 4 1/4 t. (teaspoons, usually tsp.) And finally here you are looking at a bread recipe that calls for an unreasonably precise and quite small amount of butter.

Similarly, a recipe that calls for 6 to 8 cups of flour is challenging, because that is an immense range. You should proceed with caution, knowing that your knowledge of bread making exceeds that of the recipe editor. You should also make a mental note to start with the low end of any such range and adjust upward only if necessary.

After you assess whether or not the recipe is internally consistent and how likely you think it is that the author, editor, or other source has successfully made the recipe, it is time to examine the formula.

Two methods of analysis

There are two popular ways to express the ratios of ingredients to each other. These are the baker's percentage method and the quart basis method. Both methods work, and one may be easier for you to grasp than the other, depending on how the number-handling part of your brain is wired. You should read through the descriptions of both methods, pick one to practice with, and then stay with the selected method in order to avoid future confusion.

Baker's percentage method

Baker's percentage is a bit of a misnomer. It is only loosely related to actual percentages as you learned about in eighth grade. Here's how it works:

The total weight of the flour is, by definition, 100%.

The quantity of each ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the weight of the flour. For example, the weight of the water may be 65% of the weight of the flour. Salt might be 2%. If the formula includes two flours, such as two-thirds whole wheat flour and one-third white bread flour, then the whole wheat flour is 67% and the white flour is 33% (adding up to 100% for the total flour). The other ingredients might weigh less than, as much as, or more than the flour, and the total of all ingredients will be a number well in excess of 100%.

That part about the total being higher than 100% is where baker's percentage differs from mathematical percentage. Once you accept that, you can proceed.

To use baker's percentage, you must first know what the ingredients in the formula weigh. If the formula is expressed in weight (either metric or avoirdupois—pounds and ounces), you can calculate the baker's percentages directly. If the formula is expressed in cups and spoons, you need a conversion table. One resource that claims to be accurate is http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/conversions.htm. You may find that using your own scale to weigh ingredients that you measure yourself gives more satisfactory results, however.

After you write down the formula expressed in baker's percentages, you can examine the numbers to draw conclusions about the recipe. The most important number is the hydration (see hydration in the Vocabulary (this is a dummy link of a type not implemented yet) section). You can also determine easily where this recipe falls on the continuum from lean to rich.

Quart basis method

The quart basis method is entirely different from the baker's percentage method. While the baker's percentage method is based on the weights of other ingredients in relation to the weight of the flour, the quart basis method is based on the weights of other ingredients in relation to the volume of water used. This method can be adapted for use with metric units, as well.

To use the quart basis method, you first need to understand what is water and what isn't. For the purpose of this method, treat fluid milk as if it consisted of water plus solids. The usual conversion is that a quart of milk is a quart of water plus 4 oz. of milk solids (non-instant dry milk). This applies to buttermilk, as well. For this method you do not consider the water content of eggs, honey, or molasses, even though you need to consider those when calculating hydration.

Once you know the amount of water in the formula, you scale the formula up to make up a quart. For example, if the total water in the formula is 2 cups, you double the recipe. If it isn't 2 cups, use a calculator to divide 4 cups by the number of cups of water in the original formula, and multiply all ingredient amounts by the result. (Note, again, that you can easily adapt this method to use liters instead of quarts.)

After you write down the formula scaled to the quart basis, you can examine the numbers to draw conclusions about the recipe. For example, you can determine at a glance whether the formula has the correct amount of salt (nominally 1 oz. per qt.), how milky the bread is, how rich it is, and so forth.

Setting aside, for the moment, lean doughs (those with no milk or fat) and concentrating instead on the staples of the neighborhood American bakery, white sandwich bread ranges from 1 to 3 oz. each of milk solids, fat, and sugar per qt. The low end of that range is a cheap bread and the high end is a premium bread. Dinner rolls typically have 4 oz. of milk solids (full milk bread, in other words), and in the neighborhood of 8 oz. each of fat and sugar, plus a modest quantity of eggs, per qt. When you get recipes from older sources, this range of dough is called a sweet dough. However, in the modern bakery, sweet dough typically has 4 oz. of milk solids and 1 lb. each of fat and sugar per qt. (sometimes more) plus more eggs than roll dough. Knowing this, you can readily determine if the recipe in front of you is in the range you expect.

Calculating hydration is less direct using the quart basis method than using the baker's percentage method.

Analyzing the procedure

Once you have found a comfortable method of making bread, whether by hand, in a mixer, or in an ABM, you can look at a new recipe to determine whether or not you can use your own standard procedure to make. In some cookbooks, the author offers recipes collected from many sources, each of which has a different procedure associated with it, even though the breads are not all that different from each other. In other cookbooks, the author's own idiosyncratic procedure is applied to all the recipes. This may be a perfectly fine procedure, but it may be different from what you are most comfortable doing.

When reviewing the procedure in the recipe, pay attention to what is critical to the particular bread and what is incidental. For example, if you are producing a lean bread made from a high hydration dough, the recipe may offer specific suggestions for mixing, fermenting, and handling the wet dough. These details are important. For a standard hydration straight dough, on the other hand, that produces a festive and interestingly shaped loaf, the important details have to do with moulding techniques to achieve the special shape. If you have experience making other standard hydration straight doughs, you can probably safely use your own mixing and handling methods up to the point of moulding the loaves, ignoring what you see as quirks of the author's mixing and fermenting techniques.