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Comment by annoyingnoob | Hacker News Reader

For example, let's take a typical formula for French bread:
Flour: 100% Water: 66% Salt: 2% Instant yeast: 0.6% Total: 170%

My brain will not stop telling me that the total is 168.6%.

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You get used to it. In practice it makes things very simple! Especially if you have a scale with a % option [0], but even without if you’re cooking with nice round metric weights.

I just chuck some flour on the scale, whack the % symbol, and use the set percentages for everything else.

[1] https://myweigh.com/product/kd8000/

I just use 80% hydration, it makes things easier and tastier.

A bit messy though.

For me, anything over 65% usually requires stretch and fold technique, as opposed to a knead. It's not messy at all when done that way.

Depends a lot of ambient humidity. When I lived in the North of Ireland (rainforest humidity) I always had to vastly reduce the humidity level of every recipe, sometimes by as much as half, otherwise I'd be drinking my baguettes.

So true, I just ruined a rye loaf by under-hydrating it at 65%, but I live in the desert. Lesson learned!

I find it also depends on your flour, even batch to batch (we buy 50 lb bags). Some have higher moisture content and one needs to adjust by a few % even in the same external conditions.

> You get used to it.

You do. The single most important factor is "what does the dough feel like - how stiff and hard, or how loose and wet?"

The water % captures this in 1 number.

e.g. A 60% hydration pizza dough is much stiffer than a 80% hydration focaccia dough.

Just by seeing that one number, I get an idea of how the dough is going to be to work with.

Yeah, but what you're saying is essentially "I don't need the recipe anymore - I can do this by feel", which is awesome, but who then is the recipe for except people who are trying to learn? Maybe throw us a bone :)

> Yeah, but what you're saying is essentially "I don't need the recipe anymore - I can do this by feel"

I'm really not.

I don't do it "by feel", I measure everything in grams, including water. I hate recipes in "cups" since a cup of flour or salt is not a fixed quantity - it depends on grain size, how hard you pack it down, the weather etc. But 10g salt is a fixed amount.

I'm just saying that "500g flour, 60% hydration" tells me a lot about both how to measure it accurately (300g water), and how it will feel (fairly stiff). It's an accurate part of the recipe, expressed in the fewest numbers.

The % is scale-invariant.

If ambient humidity can affect moisture content of flour, then you have more unknowns than constraints and hydration % is not enough. Doing it by feel would seem to be required to get an end-to-end result.

Yes, though that isn't such a big deal for me, as I'm not in a desert or a rainforest, the ambient humidity here is middling and doesn't vary so much. Minor changes are not very important. Flour gets stored in sealed containers, and compensations for the changes during baking are minor. e.g. the cloth over the dough is moistened during summer. Ambient humidity maybe matters like a 1-2% difference here, not a 10% difference.

I do notice seasonal changes, but that's IMHO more due to changes in ambient room temperature than anything else.

Also, I would say that measuring in grams allows you to notice and more accurately quantify that "it's dryer than usual today for the same quantities - must be due to the ambient conditions that require an adjustment".

He/she is saying something slightly different, not “I like that I can do this by feel without percentages” but rather “I like how, by a quick glance at this percentage, I know something about how that will feel in the bowl.”

60% hydration: firmer, like Play-Doh without the crumbling

70% hydration: softer and maybe a little sticky

80% hydration: super sticky, still kneadable

Really high hydration requires a lot more care, both to stop it from getting everywhere and to get it kneaded enough that it actually rises (if that is even desired)

Exactly that.

it's a single, scale-invariant number that conveys important information. And can be used to weigh accurately.

The recipe is for yourself so you can remember how to do the same nice thing again.

> Maybe throw us a bone :)

I am often amused in forums like this one, where in one moment we will decry those who who do not learn their tech by fiddling with it, for fear of breaking it - and then in the next breath be afraid of putting a touch too much water in our flour.

Think of it as a ratio(+) not percentages so

Flour 100 parts, water 66 parts and so on

(+) because that is what it is

> Think of it as a ratio(+) not percentages so

> Flour 100 parts, water 66 parts and so on

> (+) because that is what it is

It is! But it's a ratio to a standard 100 … and that's literally what a percentage is ("per centum" = "by the hundred").

Think of all the numbers as only having two significant figures

Yeah, the total is wrong. It's not a weird bakers' math total. It's a wrong total.

If you used the formula with a base of 1000 grams of flour, that's:

    water: 660g
    salt: 20g
    yeast: 6g

That adds to 1686g of dough.

Usually, bakers allow for a reasonably large margin of error, and they'll also intentionally diverge from a formula based on circumstance or whim. Getting to 1700 from 1686 would take an intentional diversion.

Exactly this. It's this sort of thing that annoys me about recipes in general, but bread recipes in particular.

The article mentions "rounded to nearest gram" but clearly they also round to nearest percent...

If you're working with 500g or 1000g of flour, then to the nearest gram is easily precise enough.

If you're measuring 8g of salt, then yeah, maybe you want 8.0g - to the first decimal point.

If you're going beyond that, then where did you get your scale, how much did it cost, what are the benefits and how do you find using it? Do you tweezer salt grains, for instance?

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