Baking with Math
Here is a lesson plan for making Pizza dough using math. Making the dough is about the precise chemistry of various ingredients. Because the interaction would deliver very different results, proportion is important.
Lesson 1 - Figure out how much of each ingredient to add to the batch
Bakers percentages for making pizza dough
Calculating how much of each ingredient to use. Use the chart below to derive how much of each to add. Baker’s percentages allow a bakery to make a scaled recipe when they are using 10lb bags or 20lb bags of flour for the recipe.
Recipe:
100% Bread Flour
65% Water
.4% Breadmaker Yeast
2.2% Sugar
2 .0% Salt
2.2% Olive Oil
This looks crazy because they add up to 171.8% . So how does this work?
Start - This is a traditional way to measure ingredients relative to each other, not relative to a whole batch. The 100% means that whatever total amount of flour you use, everything else is a percentage of that base number. There are 2 reasons for this - 1) precision. Look at how much yeast there is versus how much flour. It would be hard to measure such a small amount if the percentage was based on the weight of all the ingredients. 2) You can change the flour amount for a 5lb bag, or a 10lb bag and all the other calculations are consistent.
So start off with a calculator or a spreadsheet and go through the calculations with your student to decide on the amount of each ingredient that should be added. 550g of flour is a great basis to make 4 pizzas. Using grams might be unfamiliar, but it is a measure weight, so it is a good way to measure each of the ingredients and remain consistent in your proportions. Fill in the chart below:
Commercial Dough mixing - 50 pizzas in 1 batch
100% Bread Flour 550g
65% Water _____
0.4% Yeast _____
2.2% Sugar _____
2.0% Salt _____
2.2% Oil _____
Before we make a batch of dough, try a couple of experiments:
Experiment 1) Have your student measure with a scale. Start with water. Measure 100g, then 125g, then 127g - notice how a small amount of water makes a big difference.
Experiment 2) Have your student weigh the same amount of different forms of salt. Note the volume difference between kosher salt and table salt. Even though they are both salt, their density is quite different.
Experiment 3) Pour flour into a 1 cup measuring cup and weigh it. Then, tap the cup to pack down the flour and try to get more flour in the cup. How many more grams can you add to a cup by compressing the flour? Imagine the variation a pizza restaurant would have if they used a 50 pound bag of flour!
Experiment 4) TARE. If your scale has a tare button, have your student put a cup on the scale and press tare until the readout is “0”, Now add water and notice that the scale is only measuring the amount of ingredient that is added to the cup - not the weight of the cup itself.
Lets Makes some Pizza Dough!
Lets make some dough with our new recipe. If you made it with 550g, check your answers with the rest of the weights - (358g water, 2g yeast, 12g sugar, 11g salt, 12g Olive oil). This recipe is good for high oven temperatures (500F up to about 650F in the Pizza-Porta)
Process: Measure each of the ingredients into a separate container - a glass or a small cup will work to hold each ingredient.
Ingredients weighed and ready
1) Pour about 50g of the water you measured into your stand mixer bowl add the salt and swish around. Next, pour the yeast in and stir it for a couple of seconds and set aside.
2) When the yeast mixture has become bubbled, put the dough hook on and pour part of the flour and add the sugar, mix on 1 -or- 2 setting, add the remaining flour
3) Now start adding water 1/3 at a time to the flour mixture - keep mixing until the goopy mixture starts to hold together. Add the oil.
4) Once a ball forms from the gooey dough, start a 3 minute timer for the mixer to knead the dough. Remove and scrape out the bowl onto a floured countertop and kneed a few times by hand, folding it in half, press down, turn 90 degrees then fold in half and press down over and over.
5) When the dough starts to get some body to it, allow it to rest for 5 minutes covered by an upside down bowl.
Dough ball
6) Pull the dough out and knead it a few more times. It should feel smooth and silky by now - if not, knead it a bit more and let sit for 2 more minutes.
7) Now cut the dough into 4 equal pieces by weight. Take each of these and roll them into themselves like you are rolling a sock into a ball. Pinch the bottom together and put them pinched side down on a cookie sheet or a flat plastic container. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Pizza tomorrow!
Lesson 2:
I am connecting you with a professional - Steve Spangler has a great science site. Here is an experiment you can use with your “Pizza Pi’s”