How to calculate baker's percentages for indirect doughs?

chef_carol

I maintain a sourdough starter at 100% hydration (in other words, it contains equal masses of flour and water). Today I was documenting a recipe for pizza dough that includes some starter, and I wanted to include the baker's percentages . As I was doing so it occurred to me to wonder, What constitutes the flour? In other words, what mass should I use as the denominator when calculating all of my percentages? Should I use only the total mass of...

Originally asked by Paul Tanenbaum on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

I checked several cookbooks, including the 2nd edition of Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes . Nowhere did I find this question addressed specifically, but I did observe a pretty consistent trend: the authors (including Hamelman) did not include the flour contained by the starter when calculating baker's percentages. To be doubly sure, I phoned King Arthur Baking 's ever-helpful Baker's Hotline . The answer their representative gave me is that one is free to take either approach. I pointed out that this freedom must easily lead to ambiguity when bakers are communicating, to which he replied that when that is a concern, he'd suggest explicitly stating which...

Full answer by Paul Tanenbaum: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/128864 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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