Baker percentage

Baker's percentage is a baker's notation method indicating the flour-relative proportion of an ingredient used when making breads, cakes, muffins, and other pastries. It is also referred to as baker's math, or otherwise contextually indicated by a phrase such as based on flour weight. It is sometimes called formula percentage, a phrase that refers to the sum of a set of bakers' percentages. Baker's percentage expresses each ingredient in parts per hundred as a ratio of the ingredient's mass to the total flour's mass (that is, the unit mass):

For example, in a recipe that calls for 10 pounds of flour and 5 pounds of water, the corresponding baker's percentages are 100% for the flour and 50% for the water. Because these percentages are stated with respect to the mass of flour rather than with respect to the mass of all ingredients, the total sum of these percentages always exceeds 100%.

Flour-based recipes are more precisely conceived as baker's percentages, and more accurately measured using mass instead of volume. The uncertainty in using volume measurements follows from the fact that flour settles in storage and therefore does not have a constant density.

A yeast-dough formula could call for the following list of ingredients, presented as a series of baker's percentages:

There are several common conversions that are used with baker's percentages. Converting baker's percentages to ingredient weights is one. Converting known ingredient weights to baker percentages is another. Conversion to true percentages, or based on total weight, is helpful to calculate unknown ingredient weights from a desired total or formula weight.

To derive the ingredient weights when any weight of flour W_f is chosen:

In the example below, 2 lb and 10 kg of flour weights have been calculated. Depending on the desired weight unit, only one of the following four weight columns is used:

The baker has determined how much a recipe's ingredients weigh, and uses uniform decimal weight units. All ingredient weights are divided by the flour weight to obtain a ratio, then the ratio is multiplied by 100% to yield the baker's percentage for that ingredient:

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