I was hoping to just skip learning this and just fly by the seat of my pants, but I'm finding out that understanding the math will actually let me fly by the seat of my pants better than slavishly following recipes.
TFW
Ok, so this is all about ratios. The most important one, and basis for everything else is TFW, or total flour weight. TFW always = 100%, and the other %'s are calculated as a % against that figure.
So to calculate the Ingredient Weight you would divide the amount of, say, salt, by the amount of flour to get the %of salt. Let's say 1.4 oz salt to 16 oz flour. 0.25/16=.0156, or 1.56% salt.
Example Recipe:
700 g flour
386 g water
50 g egg
28 g fresh yeast
7 g salt
700/700 = 100% flour
386/700 = 55% water
50/700 = 7% egg
28/700 = 4% yeast
7/700 = 1% salt
TW and TP
Other important ratios are Total Weight (TW) and Total Percentage (TP). TW is the weight of finished product, and TP is the total percentage of ingredients.
The TP of the example recipe is 167%, as in 100+55+7+4+1=167.
If you know the baker's formula and the TW to want to produce, you can calculate the TP and adjust the ingredient quantities to reach the desired TW.
For example, if you want to bake 10 lbs of bread for a party, you divide the TW by the TP to determine how much flour you'll need.
10/167% = 5.98 lbs of flour, rounded up to 6 lbs ( or 96 oz)
Now you can calculate how much of the other ingredients you'll need, based on a TFW of 6 lbs.
96 * 55% = 52.8 oz water
96 * 7% = 6.72 oz eggs
96 * 4% = 3.84 oz yeast
96 * 1% = 0.96 oz salt
Ratio Ranges
When you calculate the formula, you can double check other's, or create your own recipes. There are ratio ranges that experienced bakers tell me are typical for certain types of breads.
Salt: 1.5-2.5%
Yeast: 2-4%
2% is typical for french breads, and other slow moving indirect method breads
3%+ indicates a fast moving, easy to make bread, where the enrichments determine the flavor more than the fermentation (so we can determine the example recipe is a fast-moving, enriched direct bread)
Water: 55-65% for French breads, sandwich bread and rolls, 58-80% for ciabatta and focaccia
The higher the hydration ratio, the stickier the dough will be, and the resulting bread will be rustic.
Enrichments: 0% in french bread, as the flavor comes from the natural sugars of the wheat. Up to 20% for brioche, pastry and croissants.
From this, we can determine that the example recipe is an enriched, direct method bread, relying on the eggs, and maybe accompaniments like jam and butter to add flavor. It will be easy to make, and require a lower temp because the enrichments will caramelize faster than a french bread dough. It has a lot of yeast, so will rise quickly and not need a 2nd primary fermentation, or a long one either. We might be able to lower the amount of yeast used.
Pre-ferments
The last piece of baker's math has to do with pre-ferments and how to consider them I can't take anymore for now, so I'll save that for later, relying on this article from Wild Yeast.
