Saving Bread
Saving Bread explores sourdough, grain, fermentation, craftsmanship, and the people keeping real bread alive. Join baker and educator Allison White for practical lessons and thoughtful conversations with bakers, millers, farmers, oven makers, and others shaping the future of bread.
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Saving Bread
Lessons E03 Baker's Math Made Simple | Understanding Hydration, Levain & Bread Formulas
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Baker's math doesn't have to be intimidating.
In this episode, we're breaking down one of the most misunderstood topics in bread baking into something practical and approachable. We'll walk through baker's percentages, hydration, total formula, mixing-day formula, and pre-fermented flour (PFF)—without getting lost in complicated equations.
Together, we'll build a simple country bread formula step by step, learn how to account for the flour and water in your levain, and scale that recipe into a home-sized loaf you can bake right alongside future episodes.
Whether you've always been confused by percentages or you've been baking for years and want a stronger foundation, this episode will help you read formulas with confidence and understand the language professional bakers use every day.
In this episode we discuss:
- What baker's percentages actually mean
- Why flour is always 100%
- Total hydration vs. mixing-day hydration
- Total formula vs. mixing-day formula
- How to account for the flour and water in your levain
- Understanding pre-fermented flour (PFF)
- Scaling a formula for home baking
- Answering listener questions on levain, inclusions, and dough weight
Baker's Math Resources:
DOAP Calc - https://calc.getdoap.com/
The Perfect Loaf Membership - https://www.theperfectloaf.com/membership/?utm_source=tpl-internal&utm_content=site-header
Hi friends, welcome back to a place for thoughtful conversations about bread, fermentation, grain, and the amazing people keeping this craft alive. I'm Alison White, and this is Saving Bread. And trust me, I know the phrase baker's math can sound a little intimidating. I personally did fail algebra in college and barely passed it the second time that I took it. If I can figure this out and master it, I promise you can too. The goal of Baker's Math is not to make bread feel more complicated. The goal is actually the opposite. Baker's math gives us a shared language. It helps us scale recipes up or down. It helps us understand true hydration, and it helps us read formulas from other bakers. And it helps us listen to interviews. When someone says, this dough is at 70% hydration with 15% pre-fermented flour. We can know what that means and not just immediately tune them out. So today we're going to keep things really simple. We are going to walk through one basic country dough formula. We are going to talk about total formula, total hydration, lavan, and pre-fermented flour. We are going to do a few simple calculator problems together, nothing scary, just enough so that these words start to feel familiar. Okay, if you have a moment now, go ahead and grab a couple of pieces of blank paper, a pen or a pencil, and a calculator. If you're driving or doing something else that would be unsafe to write while you're doing it, please just listen and come back later and listen again and write things down. But for now, just use your ears. And for everyone else who has a pen and a paper and a calculator nearby, go ahead and grab that and get ready to write a few things down. Okay, let's just start with the most important rule in Baker's math. Flour is always one hundred percent. Not because there's only one hundred grams of flour, not because the whole dough equals one hundred percent, but every ingredient is measured in relationship to the flour. The flour is the anchor. So when we say a dough is 75% hydration, we mean that the water is 75% of the flour weight. Let's start with a really basic formula. Let's say flour is 100%, water is 75%, and salt is 2%. This is a very simple country bread formula. Let's turn this into grams. So if you have your calculator and your pen and paper, go ahead and grab it now. Let's say we're using 1,000 grams of flour. If the flour is 1,000 grams, then 75% water means we have 750 grams of water. So let's figure out how I got that number together. Grab your calculator, type in 1000 times 0.75, and then hit the equal sign. That gives you 750. We multiplied 1000 times 75% to give us 750. So we know that our water is 750 grams. In our formula, we have salt at 2%. So let's figure out how many grams of salt we have in our formula. In your calculator, type in 1000 times point zero two. That gives you twenty. So we know we have twenty grams of salt. So our very simple dough is 1,000 grams of flour, 750 grams of water, and 20 grams of salt. That is a 75% hydration dough with 2% salt. So let's pause and define hydration. If you remember from the previous episode, hydration is simply the amount of water compared to the flour. So if I have 1,000 grams of flour and 750 grams of water, I have 75% hydration. Another way to check that is to divide the water by the flour. So in this case we have 750 grams of water and 1000 grams of flour. So in your calculator, type in 750 divided by 1000. That gives you 0.75, which is the same as 75%. So that's an easy way to check the hydration of a formula. Dividing the water by the flour. That's it. Now when we're making sourdough, we usually are not just mixing flour, water, and salt. We are also adding the lavan. And so this is where I think people start getting confused. But a lavan is not a mystery ingredient. A lavan is just flour and water that has already been fermented. So if I add lavan to my dough, I am also adding more flour and more water. That flour and that water still count. This is where the phrase total formula comes in. Total formula means we are counting all the water and all the flour and the entire dough, including the flour and the water inside of the lavan. So let's use a really common Levan percentage in a formula. Let's use twenty percent. Since we know we have one thousand grams of total flour, in order to figure out how many grams is twenty percent, we will multiply one thousand by point two zero. If you put that in your calculator, you will see that you get 200. So we know that we need 200 grams of total Levan. Go ahead and write that off to the side so we don't forget that number later. Let's say our Levan is at 100% hydration. We will continue to use Quenie, and Queenie is hydrated at 100%, which means she's equal parts, flour and water. So if I have 200 grams of Levan, that Levan is made up of 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water. Now let's go back to our dough. We want the total formula, meaning everything that's inside that dough, the total formula to be one thousand grams of total flour, seven hundred and fifty grams of total water, and twenty grams of salt. But we are also using two hundred grams of lavan. Remember that two hundred grams of lavan already contains one hundred grams of flour and one hundred grams of water. So in our final mix, our final mix is what goes into our mixer. For our final mix, we do not need to add all one thousand grams of flour as dry flour into the final mix because some of that flour is already inside of the lavan. Here's the math. Total flour that we want is one thousand grams. The flour inside of the lavan is one hundred grams. So one thousand minus one hundred equals nine hundred. That means we are adding only nine hundred grams of fresh flour to the final dough. Let's do the same for the water. The total water that we want is seven hundred and fifty grams. The water inside of the levan is one hundred grams. So seven hundred and fifty minus one hundred equals six hundred and fifty. That means we need to add only six hundred and fifty grams of water to the final dough. So the final mix, what goes into your mixer, looks like this. Nine hundred grams of flour, six hundred and fifty grams of water, two hundred grams of lavan, and twenty grams of salt. But the total formula is still one thousand grams of total flour, seven hundred and fifty grams of total water, and twenty grams of salt. We have not changed the dough. We have only changed where some of the flour and some of the water are coming from. Some of it is coming from fresh flour and fresh water, and some of it is coming from the lavan. That is the total formula. Okay, let's talk about total hydration. If you looked at the final mix, you might say, Oh, there are only 900 grams of flour and 650 grams of water, but that would not give you the true hydration because the lavan also has flour and water in it. So total hydration means we have to count all of the water and all of the flour, including what's inside of the lavan. So in this dough, we've got 1,000 grams of total flour, 750 grams of total water. So again, 750 divided by 1000 equals 0.75. That means the total hydration is 75%. Now, this is a term that I wish was explained to me much earlier on in my baking process because it's something that I use as one of my main levers when I'm baking. And that term is pre-fermented flour. You might also see that as PFF. This is a term that I will probably say, a term that you will hear coming up in interviews, and I want you to know what it means. Someone might say, I use 10% prefermented flour. That just means how much of the total flour was already fermented before the final dough was mixed. In our example, the lavan contains 100 grams of flour. The prefermented flour is the amount of flour inside of the lavan. So again, in our example, the lavan contains 100 grams of flour. The total flour for the entire dough, remember, is 1,000 grams. How do we figure out that number? You're going to type in 100 divided by 1000. That gives you 0.10, which is equal to 10%. So this dough has 10% pre-fermented flour. That means 10% of the flour was already in the lavan. So let's say that another way. This dough is 75% total hydration. It has 2% salt and it has 10% prefermented flour. The final mix, remember, final mix is what goes into your mixer. Your final mix is 900 grams of flour, 650 grams of water, 200 grams of lavan, and 20 grams of salt. But the total formula is 1,000 grams of flour, 750 grams of water, and 20 grams of salt. This is why baker's math is useful. It lets you understand what is actually happening in the dough. It lets you scale. It lets you compare one formula to another. And it lets you understand that the Levan is not separate from the formula. Levan is part of the formula. This is the biggest mistake that I see bakers making time and time and time again. They don't understand why their dough is overhydrated or moving slowly or moving too quickly because they did not account for the lavan as part of the total formula. When you hear total hydration, think all of the water divided by all of the flour. When you hear total formula, think everything in the dough, including the lavan. When you hear pre-fermented flour, think how much of the flour was already fermented in my lavan before I mixed my dough. That's it. You do not need to be a math person to understand this. You just need to remember flour is always 100%. Hydration is water compared to flour. Levan is flour and water. Total formula counts for everything. And pre-fermented flour tells us how much of the flour was already fermented. Once you understand those paces, Baker's math starts to feel less like math and more like a map. Tells you where you are, it tells you how the dough is built, tells you how quickly the dough is going to move. And eventually it helps you make changes with a lot more confidence. Okay, before I wrap this up, I do want to do an exercise where we all build a formula together because I can imagine some people at home hearing this and they're like, oh man, this feels very complicated. And the only way for it to feel less complicated is to just sit down and write out a formula and just practice a few times. And I promise things will start to click. I also quickly want to shout out Maurizio. He has sheets on his website, the perfect loaf, where you can pay to have formulas already made, and you just change certain numbers in them, and it kind of spits out how much you should put into your mixer at the end of it. And it's very, very useful. But you do need to understand these terms before you start poking around in a formula so that you know what you're doing. But when you're ready for that and you're ready to scale easily, I cannot recommend his sheets enough. If you've been scribbling away on the paper that you have in front of you, turn to a spot where you have a lot of room to write. Because I want to actually build a formula together. So again, if you're driving or walking, don't worry about writing this down right now. Just listen and you can come back to this part later. But if you're sitting at home and you've got your pen and paper in front of you, let's build an entire formula together. We are going to build one formula at 1,000 grams of total flour because the math is really easy to see. Then we're going to scale that same formula down to only 500 grams of total flour, which will give us a really nice home-sized loaf. And that 500 gram formula is one we are going to keep using for the next two lessons episodes. So at the top of your page, write total formula. Now make a small chart underneath total formula with two columns. For the first column on the left at the top, you're going to write ingredient. For the second column on the right, you're going to write the word percentage. Let's fill it in. On the left, we're going to write bread flour. And on the right, we're going to write 80%. On the left underneath bread flour, you're going to write whole wheat flour. And on the right, you're going to write 20%. On the left, our next ingredient is water. On the right, our water is going to be at 75%. And finally, we have salt, which will be at 2%. Off to the side, I'd like you to write queenie or Levan or whatever you've named your starter. And I want you to say that it's 10% pre-fermented flour. So let's take a pause now and look at our chart. We can see that bread flour is at 80% and whole wheat is at 20%. So together, those two equal 100%. That is our total flour. So when we say flour is always 100%, that doesn't mean that we only have one type of flour. It just means all of the flour in the recipe combined equals 100%. So underneath your chart or off to the side, I want you to write total flour equals 1,000 grams. We're going to start with 1,000 grams because it makes the math easy. So let's calculate each ingredient. We did this earlier, but since we have two different flours now, doing this exercise again will be very helpful. So let's figure out how many grams of bread flour we need. So if we look at our chart, we can see that bread flour is equal to 80%. So we will multiply 1000 because we have 1,000 grams of total flour. 1,000 times 0.8. So that's 800. So you're going to write down bread flour. 800 grams. For whole wheat, we are going to multiply 1000 times 0.20. That equals 200. So you're gonna write down whole wheat, 200 grams. Now check your flour. 800 plus 200 equals 1,000. That's our total flour. So let's calculate the water. Our hydration, if we look at our chart, is 75%. So you're going to type in your calculator 1,000 times 0.75. That equals 750. So you're going to write down 750 grams of water. Same with salt. Salt is 2%. So type in 1000 times 0.02. That equals 20. So you're going to write down salt is 20 grams. That is your total formula. If you want to make another little box that says total formula, you can write each one of those ingredients inside of there to refer back to. Again, 800 grams of bread flour, 200 grams of whole wheat flour, 750 grams of water, and 20 grams of salt. That's our total formula. So now we need to figure out what our final mix is. This is what is going to go into our mixer on mix day. We have to account for our Levanne. So in this case, we're using Quenie, right? Queenie is half water, half flour. But if you remember from the first episode, Quenie is half bread flour and half whole wheat flour. So let's work through how we're going to figure this out. For this formula, we know we are using 10% pre-fermented flour, which is very standard for this type of country dough recipe. That means 10% of the total flour for the entire formula is already inside of our lavan. So let's figure out how much flour that is. Grab your calculator, 1,000 times 0.10 equals 100. So we know there are 100 grams of flour inside of our lavan. But our lavan queenie, again, half bread flour, half whole wheat. So we need to split that up. 50 grams of bread flour and 50 grams of whole wheat flour. She's also hydrated at 100% hydration, which means she has equal parts of flour and water. So if she has 100 grams of total flour, she also has 100 grams of total water. 100 grams of flour plus 100 grams of water equals 200 grams of Levanne. So write down my Levan or Queenie or whatever you want to call it is equal to 200 grams. I'm just going to keep referring to her as Queenie at this point. Okay, let's move on to a new piece of paper so we can write down cleanly what we are doing on mix day. This is what is going into our bowl. We have all of our reference points now, and we're going to write down our actual final mix. Okay? So make another chart with two columns and name the chart final mix. The left column is going to say ingredient, and the right column is going to say grams. So we are going to need to subtract the flour and the water that are already inside of Queenie so that our percentages remain correct. Let's refer back to the page that we already wrote on. Our total bread flour is 800 grams, but 50 grams of bread flour are already inside of Queenie. So in our calculator, we're going to type 800 minus 50, which is equal to 750. So for our first ingredient, you're going to write bread flour. And on the right side, you will write 750 grams. Our total whole wheat is 200 grams, but 50 grams of whole wheat are already inside of Queenie. So type 200 minus 50 into your calculator, which gives you 150. So your next ingredient, whole wheat, and on the right side, you are going to write down 150 grams. Our total water is 750 grams. But 100 grams of water are already inside of Queenie. So type in your calculator, 750 minus 100. That equals 650. On our chart, we are going to write water 650 grams. The salt does not change. So you're going to write salt 20 grams. And we know for this formula, Quenie's at 20%, and we already figured out that math. So you're going to write Queenie or Levan is equal to 200 grams. So our formula for this 1,000 gram flour mixing day is 750 grams of bread flour, 150 grams of whole wheat, 650 grams of water, 20 grams of salt, and 200 grams of lavan. Now that really makes like a pretty big batch of dough, so we need to scale this same formula down. So skip a few lines or find a clean piece of paper and let's do this one final time. And I know this feels repetitive at this point, but honestly, if this type of math is new to you, I recommend listening to this episode probably two or three times and practice writing this down over and over and practicing with your calculator. So let's do this again with a smaller batch of dough, and this is what we are going to use in our next two lessons episode. Let's call this our home formula. So this time, write down total flour equals 500 grams. Please don't divide everything in half from the last formula. It's actually worth it for you to do the math and do the work. We are not changing any of the percentages. We're just making less dough. We still have the same total formula. Nothing from there is changing. The total formula is 80% bread flour, 20% whole wheat, 75% hydration, and 2% salt with 10% of the flour as pre-fermented flour. Right? That's exactly the same as before. So let's calculate it with only 500 grams of flour. So make a little chart that says home formula, and this is going to be the total formula. Okay? Let's calculate each one and then we'll figure out the final mix. So for bread flour in your calculator, you're going to type 500 times 0.8. That equals 400. So please write bread flour 400 grams. For whole wheat, you're going to type into your calculator 500 times 0.20, that equals 100. So please write whole wheat 100 grams. Now water. 500 times 0.75 is 375. So in your table, you're going to write water, 375 grams. And now salt. 500 times 0.02, that equals 10. So you will write salt 10 grams. Now let's figure out what we need to do about queenie. We're still using 10% prefermented flour. So type 500 times 0.10. That equals 50. So that means there are 50 grams of flour inside of Queenie. But Queenie is fed half bread flour and half whole wheat flour. So that means 25 grams of bread flour and 25 grams of whole wheat. Queenie is hydrated at 100% hydration, and she also has 50 grams of water. So Queenie weighs 50 grams of total flour plus 50 grams of total water. So that is 100 grams of queenie. So let's skip down and write our mixing day formula. So you can write mixing day home formula. And this is the actual recipe that we will mix in the next episode. The last step, I promise. So our total bread flour, as we calculated, is 400 grams. But 25 grams of bread flour are already inside of queenie. So type 400 minus 25, and that equals 375. So you will write bread flour, 375 grams. Our total whole wheat is 100 grams, but 25 grams of whole wheat are already inside of queenie. So type 100 minus 25. That equals 75. So whole wheat is 75 grams. Our total water is 375 grams, but 50 grams of water are already inside of queenie. So type 375 minus 50. That equals 325. So you will write water 325 grams. Salt stays the same. Write salt 10 grams. And queenie is 100 grams. So you will write queenie or Levan or whatever you've chosen to name your starter 100 grams. So here is our final home formula for our mixtay. Okay? 375 grams of bread flour, 75 grams of whole wheat flour, 325 grams of water, 10 grams of salt, and 100 grams of lavan. And that is it. You just built a bread formula from scratch. You calculated the flour blend, you calculated the hydration, you calculated the salt, you accounted for the flour and the water inside of the lavan, which is the correct way to do this. And you also calculated, which I would actually consider somewhat an advanced idea, the pre-fermented flour. But it's so essential for someone to understand what that means, especially when we get into these more deep dive conversations about whole wheat flour and pH later on. You need to know what this means. And I truly wish I had learned it sooner. So I hope that when you're listening to this at home, you really take that to heart and take the time that's necessary to really understand what pre-fermented flour is and how to calculate it. So you did it all. And you scaled the formula down into a home size loaf. You did it. Listen to this episode again if you need to, practice again if you need to, tinker with your calculator and keep this final formula. Take a picture of it or write it down in your bread notebook because in the next episode, this is what we are going to talk about. I am going to walk you through this entire formula from scaling out your flour until putting it into the oven and every step along the way. And in the subsequent episode, I will film myself making this loaf of bread so that you can follow along with me. So keep your starter healthy, keep feeding your starter, re-listen to any episodes that you need to to clarify some of these terms and ideas, and we can all be on the same page when we move on to the next lessons episode. So yeah, at the end of the day, Baker's Math is just a way of understanding what is already happening in your dough. And I'm really not here to try and make this more complicated. I'm here to help you have a map and have a map that you can understand so that you can start making decisions with more confidence and feel like you can sit down at the table and have these conversations and not feel like some of the words are too mysterious to you or you don't belong here. You absolutely do. And I hope that this episode is helpful and educational. Before I switch over to the Q ⁇ A with Leah, I just wanted to let everyone who's listening know that I wrote down this entire formula and all the steps, and I'm going to post that to the Saving Bread Podcast Instagram, which is just Saving Bread Podcast on Instagram. So you can check your math against mine, you can make sure that your charts look like mine. And again, just keep practicing and keep pushing all those buttons in the calculator until you figure it out. Okay. So now we are going to switch over to QA with Leah. Okay. Hi, Leah. Hello. Guess what I'm doing right now? Well, not right now, but like what I was doing right before this. Eating bread? I mean, no, I was eating ice cream, but my brought me a ton of these like fruit-shaped ice cream pops for my birthday. And I just had the lychee one. And it was really good. Is it delicious? It's so good. But what I'm doing is I was very inspired by Alex's interview about sourdough cookies. So I just made my own brown sugar and I browned some butter and I'm steeping a vanilla bean in the browned butter. And I'm going to make some chocolate chip cookies for our trip this weekend. But I'm leaving first thing tomorrow. So yeah, it's like I'm trying to rush it a little bit. But oh got it. I really want to make them because I was so inspired by her interview. So that is happening.
SPEAKER_00So you made your own brown sugar?
SPEAKER_01I did. Actually, I think it's better than using regular brown sugar because the brown sugar, when I buy it, it's always perfect like the first time, but then it gets kind of dry. Yeah. So this time I just mixed white sugar with this really nice molasses that I have in the mixer, like in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, and it's like very soft and aromatic. So I'm excited to try it with homemade brown sugar this time and see if that makes a difference. And you've had my cookies a lot of times, so you'll be able to tell me if it's any different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I should be able to. It's interesting. I knew some girl who made her, she was the one that I told you that I knew, and she ended up starting a bakery and then she got burnt out after starting her own bakery, but she ended up making her own powdered sugar.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's right. Yeah, I think you did tell me that. I was so inspired by Alex making all of her ingredients from scratch, like her marshmallows and her browned butter and her vanilla extract. And I was thinking, if I just didn't think about the dollars and really just focused on the flavor, like what would I do?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is interesting, everybody making their own stuff. Like I said, that was she was one of the first people, this was a long time ago, who she was like, I made everything that I could make. Obviously, you know, you're not making sugar, but she made her own powder. She she made everything that she could from scratch that ever required. Oddly enough, though, I highly doubt she milled her own flour. Isn't that funny? Just throwing that out there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's the forgotten. It's a forgotten ingredient for sure. Okay, so this is the this is the Baker's Math episode, and one that I feel people get easily overwhelmed by. But I got a few questions ahead of time. Hopefully, people are much more clear after they've listened to the recording, but I wanted to cover some of the questions that were sent in, if you don't mind reading them for us.
SPEAKER_00All right, yep, we will get started. First question: How do I factor in the levain, water, and flour into the total flour weight and hydration?
SPEAKER_01This is probably the most common baker's math question that I get. And the short answer is that the flour and water inside of inside of your lavane or your lavan absolutely count towards your total flour and your total hydration. So think of your lavan as flour and water that just got mixed together a little earlier than everything else. So if my total formula calls for 500 grams of flour and my lavan already has 50 grams of flour, I don't then add 500 grams of fresh flour into my bowl on mixing day. I only add 450 grams because the other 50 are already inside of the lavan. And the same goes for the water. If my dough has 375 grams of total water, but my lavan already contains 50 grams of water, then into my mixing bowl, I'm only adding 325 grams of like new water during mixing so that I'm not overhydrating my dough. So that's why we talk about our formulas as either a total formula or a mixing day formula. They're describing the same dough, but they're just from two different perspectives.
SPEAKER_00Is it normally, and this might sound like a silly question, but in recipes, right, if I'm baking a loaf of bread or many loaves of bread, is it called out how much Levan is required, like in grams?
SPEAKER_01I assume so based off the way you're talking about it, but yeah, typically it is, but sometimes books might only write things as percentages. So it's nice to know where those numbers are coming from. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. That was question one. All right, question two. How do I factor for inclusions? And I assume inclusions are like fruit, other things. That's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like nuts and seeds and dried fruit, jalapeno cheddar seems to be a popular one that I am very against, but that'll be a different topic for another day. Um, and you know, just anything additionally, roasted garlic, whatever, anything that's not flour, water, salt is typically considered an inclusion. And so I think this person is trying to understand how much to add. So it can get a little bit complicated because the easiest way to do this is to say I want to add between 15 and 20% inclusions to my dough. So I like to err on the side of less inclusions. So let's call it 15%. If I have 500 grams of flour in my formula, I would multiply that by 0.15. Let me do that math really quick. As I said in my episode, I'm not very good at math. I always have to use my calculator. 500 times 0.15 is 75. So I would add 75 grams of inclusions to that dough if I wanted it at 15%. But my dough is now 75 grams heavier than it was without the inclusion. So if you want a very specific dough weight, you do need to take that into consideration. And that is where things become more complicated. And I think at that point, it's better to rely on an already made-up dough calculator. So Josh from Dope, who provides all of the music for the podcast, he has a free one on his website that you can use and just type in what you want and it'll spit out the numbers for you. Maurizio also has one on his website, The Perfect Loaf. That one comes with his paid subscription, and you can factor in any inclusions that you want there and still have a set dough weight, and the formula will automatically change everything else for you so that you end up with the correct amount of dough at the end and nothing extra.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's very cool. That's really nice to have the calculators like that versus trying to do that in your head.
SPEAKER_01I cannot do that kind of math in my head. Like, there's no way. Um, because you'd have to take a little bit from everywhere, and it just becomes very complicated. So that's why it's better to have a formula that you can just, it's already set and done. I have one for all the different kinds of things that I make. And then at the number or at the top, you can just put in the number of how many of them you want to make that day, and it'll just like spit everything out for you, and you just focus on what you're scaling out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's so nice. Yeah, because I guess with total weight, right? But you have multiple ingredients that then it contribute to the weight. Yeah, it's that's one, yeah. Every single one takes a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it becomes complicated.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, agree.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And I think that's what that person was asking. So I would just direct them over to the the free one on the dope website or yeah, Maurizio's sheets on his website.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. Makes sense. Yeah, that's nice to have. Shout out to those people for those.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Okay. Next question. If I am making two loaves at 1,000 kilos each, how do I factor in the leven?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. So this is also a complicated. It's a I would consider this like a more advanced baker's math formula. So the trick is to add up all of your percentages first. So this person asked, can you repeat the question one more time?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. If I am making two loaves at 1,000 kilos each, how do I factor it in?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that would be if you have two loaves at 1,000 kilos, that's two it's two, sorry, if you have, I think what they meant was if you have a loaf at one kilo, which is a thousand grams, right? Or two kilos, which is two thousand grams. So they're asking if I have two one kilo loaves, right? So that's two thousand grams of total dough. They're trying to figure out how much Levanne do I need, or how do I figure out all the percentages if I know I want this much dough at the end? How do I work backwards? I think that's what this person is asking. So I'm I will explain how to do that. And again, it is a little bit more tricky, but it is once you understand the concept, you can kind of break it down. So, first you need your working formula, as in the one that will go in the mixer on mixed day. Let's just stick with the same formula from the episode. So flour is equal to 100% always. For this formula, water is 75%, salt is 2%, and the Levan was 20% because it was 10% prefermented flour and 100% hydration. So we all agreed it would be 20%. So now we need to add up all of those percentages. So 100 plus 75 plus 2 plus 20, that equals 197%. Okay. So in order to get the total flour, we want to take, so total flour equals desired dough weight divided by 197%. To turn that into a decimal, that's 1.97. So let me repeat that one more time. Total flour equals desired dough weight divided by 1.97, which is the same as 197%, which was the total of all of our percentages from that formula. Okay, so this example, I want two loaves at 1,000 grams each. So our desired dough weight is 2,000 grams. So we divide 2,000 by 1.97, that gives us 1,015 grams of flour. For all of our listeners who listened just before this, you can now apply all of the same math to that number of flour. So everything else is easy. So if you know that you have 1,015 grams of flour, in order to figure out how much of each ingredient you multiply against the total flour. So let's say we had 80% bread flour, we would just multiply 1,015 by 0.80 and so on through the formula. It's a little bit more complicated, but yes, I guess if that person is really wanting the true answer, that's it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it's complicated, but at the same time, that's actually relatively easy when you just think about multiplying it back against the percentages.
SPEAKER_01The the thing about Baker's math is there's no surprise number from anywhere. It's all coming from what's in your mixer. So sometimes it's just figuring out how to think about those numbers to figure out how to manipulate them to get the answer that you want.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's that's it. That was, I think that was our last question. We didn't have very many this week.
SPEAKER_00No, you have one more.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I did?
SPEAKER_00One more. Well, which actually you'd already talked about a bit, but resources for baker's math.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. Um, Maritia's page, the perfect loaf, um, Josh's page for dope, um, on his dope website. They have uh he has a free baker's math calculator. And I'm sure there are endless resources out there. Those would be the two that I trust the most. And um, of course, the episode that everyone just listened to right now, which is also free for you to hear.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's true. So your own podcast, check and Ratios and Dope.
SPEAKER_01Josh from Dope.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Josh from Dope. That's right.
SPEAKER_01And I'll link them in the show notes so that everyone can easily find them, and I'll link them on our Instagram page, which is um Saving Bread Podcast. All right. All right, I'm gonna end the recording for us. Okay, okay, bye. Thanks all. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Saving Bread Podcast. Music by Joshua from Dope. I'm Allie White. And as always, happy baking and long live real bread.