About The Recipe

Professor: I read something about formulas and baker’s percentage. What is the difference?

Chef Alex: I know. It is confusing, but let’s take a look at it.

Although recipes, formulas, and baker’s percentages are similar and often used interchangeably, there are differences between them; each has distinct meanings and uses, so it is essential to understand these distinctions.

A recipe is primarily used in cooking and provides guidelines for preparing food. In contrast, a formula and a baker’s percentage are used in various fields to calculate specific results based on established mathematical or scientific principles.

All three terms involve following a set of instructions, but the nature and purpose of those instructions differ significantly.

Recipe:

A recipe is a set of instructions or guidelines that outline how to prepare a specific dish or food item. It typically includes a list of ingredients and detailed steps for combining and cooking them to create a finished product.

Recipes are flexible and allow for some degree of customization. Cooks and chefs can adjust ingredients, quantities, and seasonings to suit their preferences or dietary restrictions. Recipes can vary in complexity, from simple recipes with just a few steps to more elaborate ones with many ingredients and intricate techniques.

Recipes can be adapted and modified over time, reflecting changes in taste, culture, and availability of ingredients. They can vary from batch to batch and person to person based on inherent inaccuracies such as human error and measuring in volume rather than by weight.

Home cooks and restaurants use recipes.  

Formula:

A formula is a precise and systematic set of mathematical, scientific, or procedural instructions to calculate or derive a specific result. They are typically rigid and must be followed precisely to achieve the desired outcome.

Unlike recipes, formulas are less open to interpretation or variation. They are designed to provide consistent and predictable results when applied correctly.

In food production, a formula is a fixed set of specific ingredients listed in percentage by weight and processing instructions that have been standardized to make a food item consistently. All the ingredients in a production formula total 100 percent, so the operator can quickly scale the formula up or down depending on production demands.

Professor: Who uses formulas?

Chef Alex: Food Manufacturers: Companies in the food industry use food formulas to standardize their product recipes. This ensures their products have consistent taste, quality, and nutritional content.

Food Scientists and Researchers: Food scientists and researchers use food formulas to study the composition, characteristics, and nutritional content of various food products. They may also develop new food products using specific formulations.

Dietitians and Nutritionists: Dietitians and nutritionists use food formulas to create meal plans and dietary recommendations for their clients based on their nutritional needs and dietary restrictions.

Food Service Institutions: Restaurants, caterers, and institutional kitchens in schools, hospitals, and prisons use food formulas to prepare large quantities of food consistently and efficiently.

Food Packaging and Labeling: Food manufacturers and regulatory agencies use food formulas to determine the ingredients and labeling for packaged food products to comply with regulations and inform consumers.

Food Quality Control and Testing: Food quality control laboratories use food formulas to test and ensure the quality and safety of food products by comparing them to established standards.

Baker’s Percentages:

Baker’s percentages, also known as baker’s math or baker’s formula, express the ingredients in a bread recipe as a percentage of the total flour weight. The key ingredient, flour, is always set at 100%, and all other ingredients are calculated as a percentage of the flour weight. This method allows for easy scaling of recipes and helps maintain consistency in bread production.

Professor: Who uses baker’s percentage?

Chef Alex: Professional bakers commonly use this system to create and adjust bread recipes.

Processing:

Besides the method of transforming the ingredients in a recipe into a formula or baker’s percentage, processing can have a substantial effect on the finished product. There is a big difference between cooking a stew in a small pot on a stove and making the same stew in a 500-pound steam kettle. In baking, the operator must determine dough temperatures, mixing time, fermentation period, baking temperature, steam, and many other things to ensure consistency. For now, we will stick to talking about ingredients.

Reproducibility:

Food production starts with a great recipe. You’ll need to turn that recipe into a scalable professional formula to scale production and increase sales.

Reproducibility is the key to translating a recipe into a formula or baker’s percentages.  From flavor, consistency, economic implications, and consumer satisfaction, the food item needs to be produced exactly the same every single time.  For this to be possible, a recipe must be converted to a formula or baker’s percentage, which needs to be commercialized, tested, and approved in a manufacturing setting.

Professor: So, how do you turn a recipe into a formula?

Chef Alex: From Recipe to Formula

Convert all ingredient quantities to the same weight unit, from volume measurements (cups, teaspoons, etc.) to weights (ounces, pounds, grams, kilos)

Weigh out each ingredient in the recipe. It is helpful to do this in smaller batches with a gram scale. In larger amounts, ingredients can be measured in ounces or pounds.

Here’s an example with a basic French bread dough:

3 ½ cup all-purpose flour

1 ½ + 1 tablespoon water

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon instant yeast

1 tablespoon honey

First, convert to grams

500 g all-purpose flour

360 g water

10 g salt

3 g instant yeast

25 g honey

Next, convert your recipe in grams to a percentage.

1.) Add all ingredient weights to get your total ingredient weight.

2.) Divide each ingredient weight by the total ingredient weight.

3.) Multiply this number by 100, which equals your ingredient percentage.

Professor: What about from recipe to baker’s percentage?

Chef Alex: From Recipe to Baker’s Percentage

Using the same recipe.

1.) Choose the flour as the base ingredient and set its weight as 100%.

2.) Calculate the percentage of all the other ingredients based on their weight relative to the weight of the flour.

Ingredients      recipe                        grams                formula           baker’s percentage

Flour                3 ½ cups                      500 g               55.7%                     100%

Water              1 ½ cups + 1 Tbsp       360 g               40.1%                      72%

Salt                  2 tsp                             10 g                 1.1%                         2%

Yeast                1 tsp                                3 g                   0.3%                      0.6%

Honey              1 tbsp                            25 g                   28%                         5%

Total                                                    898 g                 100%                  177.6%

With these percentages, you can easily scale the recipe up or down while maintaining the proper ratios of ingredients.

Professor: Why is this important?

Chef Alex: By changing a recipe to a formula or baker’s percentage, you get:

Consistent Quality. When you weigh your ingredients instead of measuring them, your finished product quality will be much more consistent. The way one person measures out flour may be very different than another. Is it a heaping cup or a leveled cup? Is the flour sifted first or not? All these variations add up to inconsistent quality in your finished product.

Controlled Costs. Weighing out your ingredients gives you better control over your product cost. This makes it much easier to understand your unit costs and your margins.

Ease in Scale-ability. Converting your recipes to percentages allows greater flexibility in scaling your batch up or down as needed. No more over- or under-producing your product.

More Accurate Label Information. Your nutrition facts and other label information will be accurate.

When a strong product specification is written, reproducible products are possible.

After exploring the differences between formula, baker’s percentage, and recipe, it is crucial to understand the distinction between them.

One key takeaway is that formulas are often used in scientific or technical fields, baker’s percentages in commercial bakeries, where precision and accuracy are crucial. Recipes, on the other hand, are typically used in the culinary world, where creativity and personal taste play a more prominent role.

Understanding the difference between formula, baker’s percentage, and recipe can help us communicate more effectively and avoid confusion in various industries.