February 2, 2009 - 10:13am
ok here goes.....
ok, I have what I feel is a really dumb question that I should know but I am struggling with.
Please help me understand percentages. What is 100% hydration starter? How do you figure all of the percent I see being thrown around. How do I know what % my starter is. I feed it with 1 c flour 1 c water, it is kind of like thick pancake batter. I am saving now to take a 5 day class at SFBI (I can't wait) I know it will help me tremendously with the math part of baking.
Thanks in advance.
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Hi, Newgirl,
I had exactly the same confusion, until someone here set me straight. They are using what they call bakers' percentages. That means ingredients other than flour are expressed as a percentage of the total weight of flour in the recipe. So, if your starter contains one cup of flour, and that flour weighs, let's say, 5 ounces, then a 100% hydration starter would also contain 5 ounces of water. Since a cup of water is about 8 ounces, the starter you are using now is about 160% hydration.
Dave
Wild Yeast does an excellent job explaining the baker's percentage in her blog
Read the entire tutorial and you'll be good to go.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/baker039s-math