| 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. |
Teaching it in such uninteresting ways kids don't remember it. And I'm not surprised based on funding and wages...