[jillesvangurp]

Amateur baker here. Perhaps the best insight into baker's math is that it depends on a lot of factors: the humidity, the type of flour, how coarse/fine it is ground, protein content, etc. And then it also depends on your technique and skill creating strength and structure. Handling high hydration dough requires a lot of skill and not doing it properly means you end up with a flat bread rather than a loaf of bread. If it doesn't hold it's shape, either your technique is lacking or your hydration is too high (or both). Or you bought the wrong flour. Seriously, look for decent bread flour on Amazon or wherever. Chances are your local super market does not actually sell any flour a baker would be happy to use.

The main point of baker's math is not to have recipes that you can share on the internet which people can then blindly follow but to have a repeatable process that works for the flour you use and whatever level of technique/skill you have.

Say you bake bread with a certain type of flour at a 75% hydration and you had a hard time shaping the dough; next time using the same flour drop the percentage to 70% and you might have an easier time and if you are happy with the bread you stick with that hydration. Or work on your technique. Or both. If you switch flour brand or type, you'll have to figure out the optimum hydration level again. But being systematic about weighing out your ingredients means you can at least repeat it once you get to the optimal ratios.