September 16, 2015 - 8:53am
Professional Baking 6th Edition errors?
Hi guys, I was just curious about some apparent mistakes(?) In professional baking 6th edition by Wayne Gisslen. Specifically I was looking at the sourdough starters and recipes. On page 155, basic sourdough starter stage 2 calls for 1lb in US measurement and 500g in metric. That's not right in and of itself but on the next page, old fashioned rye bread calls for 1lb in US measurement but only 400g in metric. Is this just an oversight in publishing or is this a flaw with his formulas. I have read that many of his formulas don't work so now I'm wondering if it's a problem where one set of measurements is right but the other one isnt. The ratios are the same frome all I can see though so one should just produce more than the other, right?
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This is not an error as it follows the baker's percentage. It is just making two different amounts of dough. It looks like the amounts were chosen to make things easier to measure and scale. The bread and starter is exactly the same but yields different batch sizes. One will be a little over 2 lbs and the other a little under 2 lbs.
The only problem would be if you were to move back and forth between the two ways of measuring. Don't add 1 lb of flour but use 200g (or ml) of water for instance. It should be 1 lb with 8 oz of water or 400g of flour with 200g of water.
Yeah I was thinking since the ratios were the same it should be ok. Still seems odd that on one page 1lb is equated with 400g and the next page it's 500g. Seems like it would be either or, but not both. :shrug:
Right in the middle at ~454g =)
Don't think of it as conversion of ounces to grams, but of baker's percentage to amounts. Most books I have seen will do the conversion, but if you only look at the one column, the numbers are much easier to work with. Especially when you look at the different stages for the starter. Just choose to work in ounces or grams and stick to it (I use grams for baking and ounces for pretty much everything else in life).
This just drives home the importance of baker's percentage. Once you have that then you can choose any batch size you want and it will still be the same bread (for the most part).
Yep. And for baking, weight is the right method, not volume.
I am getting good at eyeballing it, I made a batch of poolish this morning and I hit the weight of flour and the water +/- 3 grams.
Europeans are truly metric so they have no sentimental attachment to the pound. 1/2 kilo makes more sense and life easier than .454 kilo.
Gerhard