Overview
The dough calculator contains several worksheets. They are:
- Info:
- Describes the copyright information and source information
- Recipe:
- This is the worksheet where you enter a recipe/formula. You will then input the desired final dough weight and the weight and volume for all ingredients will be calculated, as will a dough temperature management calculation. A secondary page on this worksheet contains helpful conversion tables.
- Analysis
- This worksheet contains a full hydration and cost analysis of the recipe/formula on the "Recipe" worksheet. It lists hydration and costs for ingredients in each formula, as well as for the overall dough (incorporating ingredients from preferments). You never edit this worksheet; it is calculated from the contents of the "Recipe" worksheet.
- Reverse:
- This is similar to the main recipe page, except that you will enter weightof ingredients, in grams, and baker's percentages will be calculated for you. You may then transfer the result to the recipe sheet or a template sheet.
- Levains:
- This worksheet will aid you in calculations related to the use of levains and preferments and their hydration.
- Template:
- This worksheet is a template. You make copies of it and fill in the boxes with formulas you like to keep. When you need a particular recipe you copy the relevant information from here to the recipe worksheet.
- Lookup:
- Contains important information regarding ingredients, such as specific gravity, water content, and price per pound. The recipe worksheet uses this information as a database for its calculations, such as conversions from weight to volumes for specific ingredients.
- Examples:
- Containta a few example formulas for you to play with.
Each worksheet has its own documentation page (or pages). You can navigate to them using the navigation bar on the left. The most important thing to remember is that you enter data in cells that have a yellow background. Nowhere else!
Functionality
Many things are possible using the Dough Calculator. Here is a partial list. Use the navigation bar on the left to go to documentation for each use. On some of the pages you may find additional uses described.
- Reverse engineering. You enter ingredients and weights (in grams), and it computes the baker's percentages for you.
- Conversion between regular milk and dried milk.
- Conversion between sugar/honey/Splenda.
- General conversion between volume and weight for specific ingredient.
- Conversion between Fresh/Active Dry/Instant Dry yeast.
- Compute hydration contribution of each ingredient in formula.
- Compute hydration levels of levains and starters and their contribution in final dough and overall dough.
- Compute adjustments to formulas when substituting different hydration level starters for others, or for yeast.
- Compute necessary water temperature for formula based on desired dough temperature, room temperature, ingredient temperature and mixer friction. Also computes amount of ice needed as substitute for water to reach the right temperature.
- Scale any formula to a desired total dough weight.
- Scale any formula to a desired number of loaves of a desired finished weight.