Stop Following Recipes: How to Write Your Own Bread Narrative with Baker's Math

Sometimes, the best way to learn a craft ain't by following a recipe straight through. Sometimes, you gotta understand the language of the dough itself. When you start working with wild yeast and developing your own starter, you'll soon find that following numbers on a page feels a bit restrictive, eh?

Martin Philip, one of the reckonings experts out there, spent time showing us how to bake a baguette—a lovely, crisp loaf, mind you—not by starting with a recipe, but by starting with the percentages. This whole concept, called Baker's Math, is like getting the blueprints to the dough, giving you the freedom to adjust things when the wild yeast whispers that it needs a little more water, or maybe a dash more salt.

If you reckon you want to take the reins of your baking and stop being held hostage by fixed measurements, this deep dive is a crackerjack read. We’ll walk through the fundamentals of how these percentages work, so you can start writing your own bread narratives, right from your own kitchen bench.

Understanding the Core Percentages

When we talk about percentages in baking, we’re not talking about how many grams of flour you bought. We’re talking about ratios—the relationship between the main ingredients in the dough environment. It’s a foundational concept, but once you get it, it changes everything.

• Flour: This is always the anchor, the foundation, and it gets 100%.
• Water (Hydration): This is the ratio of water to flour. Martin mentioned that for baguettes, you might aim for 75% to 78% hydration. This number tells you how wet your dough is.
• Salt: This usually hovers around 2% of the flour weight. It’s crucial for flavor and controlling the yeast.
• Leavening (Yeast/Levain): This is the activity booster. Because using a liquid preferment (like a poolish) already brings a lot of activity, you can actually use less commercial yeast.

The genius of this system is that if you want to make your dough a little stickier, you adjust the hydration percentage. If you want it to taste punchier, you adjust the salt. You can literally rewrite the formula and run the numbers again, and the dough will follow.

From Percentages to Practice: The Recipe Formula

The next step is calculating the Total Dough Percentage (TDP). You simply add up all your percentages (Flour + Water + Salt + Yeast). This gives you your total formula structure. Once you know your TDP, you can decide how much bread you want to make—your total batch size. Then, you just divide your total batch weight by your TDP to figure out the exact weight of each ingredient.

It sounds complicated, maybe a bit like doing calculus in the kitchen, but trust me, it’s just a matter of understanding ratios. It takes the guesswork out of the process, letting you bake with confidence, rather than just hoping the recipe works.

If you’re ready to see this magic in action, Martin walked us through the entire process, from the whiteboard to the perfect crust. Give this a watch when you've got a cuppa on!

Take Control of Your Dough

The ability to adjust your formula on the fly is what separates following instructions from mastering a technique. It's what allows a Bread Angel to adapt when the weather changes, or when their wild yeast decides it wants to play hardball. Don't let recipes dictate your baking potential.

Ready to put this knowledge into action and start controlling your own dough narratives? The 30-Day Sourdough Challenge is the perfect way to turn theory into tangible, delicious loaves. Enroll today and let's get baking!