Formula

In baking, a formula is the written list of ingredients and amounts used to produce a product, and bread and pastry formulas are often expressed as baker's percentage. In that system each ingredient's weight is shown relative to the flour, and flour is always 100 percent.

To find an ingredient's weight, multiply its percentage by the flour weight. A BCcampus open textbook gives the example of 62 percent water with 20 kilograms of flour, which gives 12.4 kilograms of water. If the ingredient weights are known, dividing each by the flour weight gives its percentage. A formula can also be worked backward from a target dough weight: for a 25 kilogram batch with a 171 percent total, flour is about 14.62 kilograms.

The textbook advises using baker's percentage for formulas written that way and the conversion factor method for standard recipes. Where possible, ingredients are expressed by weight, which matters most for dry ingredients.