Dave Bell wrote:
> Mike Avery wrote:
>
>> weigh in on the matter, but as long as you are doing
>> sourdough, it really doesn't matter THAT much.
>>
>
> Well, I do rely on mine to be pretty close, when I'm weighing in salt...
>
>

Some folks who seem to think I measure everything to the nearest ten
thousandth of a gram and that I am obsessively "scientific" or obsessed
with toys may have trouble believing I am writing this. Oh well. Life
goes on.

Anyway, let's imagine we're making two 1.5 loaves of bread at around 70%
hydration. Before baking, I like to have each loaf around 770 grams to
accommodate for baking loss, so I need to put about 1,540 grams of dough
into the oven. It's a holdover from commercial baking. No one cares
what you put in the oven, they want the weight of bread that is stated
on the label, so you put in a bit more than the desired end weight of
the bread.

Of that 1,540 grams of dough, figure about 170 grams is starter, of
which half is flour, and there are another 950 grams of assorted flour
in the loaf, for a total of around 1,120 grams of flour.

Most bread doughs run about 2% (as a baker's percentage) salt, so we're
looking at about 22.4 grams of salt..

Now then.... how much error do we have under different circumstances?
It depends on how you look at it. (We'll ignore, at least for now, a
discussion of the differences between accuracy, repeatability and
resolution and just assume we have fairly well behaved scales.)

If you have a scale that is resolves to .1 gram, you could weigh
anywhere from just over 22.3 to just under 22.5 grams and still
conceivably show 22.4. At first glance, that looks like an error of as
much as .1 gram, or .44%

If you have a scale that is resolves to 1 gram, you could weigh anywhere
from 22 to 23 grams. And your error would be as much as .6 grams, which
look like an error of 2.7% (The greatest error would be 23-22.4, or .6
grams.)

If you have a scale that resolves to the nearest 2 grams, you could
weigh anywhere from 20 to 24 grams and show 22. Your error could be as
much as 2.4 grams, which would look like an error of 10.7%. (The
greatest error would be 22.4 - 20, or 2.4 grams.)

However, I am inclined to think that the error we are interested in is
with regards to the bakers percentage, not to the desired weight of the
salt.

And the range of bakers percentage of salt that we measured out would
range from 2.05% (with the .1 gram scales) to 1.78% using the 2 gram
resolution scales. Or an error ranging from .05% to .22%. In short,
sometimes it's not worth chasing the last 2 decimal points. I doubt
anyone could taste, or tell, the difference between using 2% salt, 2.05%
salt or 1.78% salt. Any of them are much closer than you will get with
teaspoons, and in the grand scheme of things, the little errors in the
weights just aren't that important.

Mike


--
Mike Avery mavery at mail dot otherwhen dot com
part time baker ICQ 16241692
networking guru AIM, yahoo and skype mavery81230
wordsmith

A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day:
Now is the time for all good men to come to. -- Walt Kelly