Percentages

A reader has asked: When bread bakers talk about percentages, what do they mean exactly?

A: One of the explanations states that baker’s percentages developed from the use of 100-pound sacks of flour so that the weight of all the other ingredients were percentages of that 100 pounds. Today, quantity bread bakers assign 100% to the weight of the flour in the formula and then calculate the percentage of all the other ingredients based on that. Why? It’s a good way to analyze the proportions of all the ingredients in relation to each other. Home bakers don’t need to use or know this.