Bakers percentage spreadsheet

[Tim F]

Hi all, I have put together a little spreadsheet to work with bakers percentages - thought I'd post it in case others find it useful. There are 2 calculators here - the first one lets you enter weights and gives you the percentages of these ingredients compared to the main ingredient. The other calculator lets you enter bakers percentages from an existing recipe or the first calculator, and the final dough weight required, and tells you the actual weights you need.

I use this to scale up or down recipes where I have either percentages or weight measurements. It has instructions and should be pretty straight forward!

It uses macros so Excel may give you a warning. You may want to run this through a virus scanner before opening if you don't trust me - of course this should be standard practice with any spreadsheet

[heliman]

Re: Bakers percentage spreadsheet

Great calculator - thanks for posting.

Ross

[heliman]

Re: Bakers percentage spreadsheet

Quick question ...

Why does the flour and water amount vary so much when switching from dry to fresh yeast on this calculator? I'm sure that there is a simple explanation for this...

TIA

Rossco


Base Recipe
=========

Flour 500.0 100.00%
Other ingredients
Salt 3.0 0.60%
Yeast 9.0 1.80% (Fresh)
Water 325.0 65.00%

Baker's % - Fresh Yeast for 908 Grams Dough
==================================

Flour 542.4 100.0%
Salt 3.3 0.6%
Yeast 9.8 1.8%
Water 352.6 65.0%

Baker's % - Instant Yeast for 908 Grams Dough
==================================

Flour 546.3 100.0%
Salt 3.3 0.6%
Yeast 3.3 0.6%
Water 355.1 65.0%

[Dutchoven]

Re: Bakers percentage spreadsheet

I don't want to necessarily answer for Tim but it is likely because there would be moisture in the cake fresh yeast that would have to be accounted for in the final recipe. It really is a great calculator. We use something similar done in excel also.
Great work!
Dutch

[heliman]

Re: Bakers percentage spreadsheet

Interesting - though this would suggest that there is some "logic" programmed into the spreadsheet. That is, it would need to understand that, for example, "Fresh Yeast" and "Instant Yeast" are distinct and would need to be weighted according to allow for different moisture contents etc.

I certainly agree, this is a fantastic calculator and it keeps things simple! There are some other calculators around that require additional characteristics to be included which probably result in a more accurate end result, but they are beyond my needs so Tim's solution is fine.

My question was posed more out of curiosity that anything else as I thought that there may have been some simple explanation that I was missing. I am always eager to learn more about this exciting topic!!!

Rossco

I don't want to necessarily answer for Tim but it is likely because there would be moisture in the cake fresh yeast that would have to be accounted for in the final recipe. It really is a great calculator. We use something similar done in excel also.
Great work!
Dutch