We're trying to make a pizza dough that is a 50lb bag of flour, has an end hydration of 61% that uses a poolish that is 25% of the end weight of the dough. The end weight of the original dough: 50lb flour, 61% hydration, no poolish is 81.65lbs. When I've tried to change to incorporate the poolish, the numbers I get are:
- Flour: 39.8
- Yeast: .3%
- Salt: 2%
- Water 48%
- Poolish
- Flour: 10.2lbs
- Water: 10.2lbs
So have my spreadsheet set up in two columns, one for dough and one for poolish. In order to figure out the 48% hydration in the main dough I used:
(.75 * X) + (.25*100) = 61 this gave me X=48
The end weight I get when I change everything to the above numbers ls 85.35lbs. I'm not understanding of why this is happening.
edit: so the difference between dough without a poolish and dough with a poolish is there's an extra 3.7lbs of water in the main dough. Is this to make up for the hydration being broken up between dough and poolish and the 75% main dough 25% poolish thing?
In bakers percentages the flour is always 100% and everything is a percentage to the flour. Yet in your formula you have the flour at 39.8(?)
And even if you are adding everything up to 100% your formula falls short.
Something is not right.
I have each ingredient in the left column taking to the flours in the left and right column and adding them together than taking that number and multiplying that by the percentage that each ingredient is of the flour. I.e. yeast is =(C2+M2)*0.003
I took a stab at it. See if this looks correct, if not let me know what is off. The first sheet uses your weights for the polish. The second sheet calculates a 25% poolish.
Here is 25% Poolish
Boy, you hit us a right time. You've got a lot of great help working to help you out. This forum can not be beat!
If you like it and want the spreadsheet, let me know.
Danny
well done...
The formula works. You have calculated the poolish weight as 25% of the dough weight and this is incompatible because the formula works on total flour weight.
48% hydration is correct if you pre-fermenting 25% of the flour. In this case the poolish should be 12.5lbs flour, 12.5lbs water. Main dough flour would then be 37.5lbs.
Our client specifically would like the poolish to be 25% of the total dough weight. I assume I need to change my formula?
Just subtract the weight of water and the weight of flour in the poolish from the original formula.
Total Formula:
Total Dough = 81.65 lbs
25% of 81.65 = 20.4125
Your poolish is 20.4125 lbs (50:50 flour and water taken from the total) = 10.20625 lbs flour + 10.20625 lbs water
The final recipe rearranged...
=((C2+M2)*0.61)-M4
Just make your poolish 10 and 10 and then your dough becomes 40 and 21.65. No need for spreadsheets.