My Math Phobia and Peter Trying to Help me understand how to figure out things.

I have always had problems with math.  I don’t know if it is because I am dumb in math or what happens when I see numbers that are complicated.  Since I have been learning to make pizza, I always have trouble when there is something to figured out with math that has to do with pizza.
Peter (Pete-zza) recently helped with explaining more about what can go into formulas.  If I can ever get this all down, I will be a better pizza maker.  Who knows what time will do.  I am getting older and things don’t come as easily for me as when I was younger, especially the math, which I always had a hard time with.

This was how Peter explained how to do the math:

Norma,

To help you get over your math phobia, I will show you how to convert the dough formulation you referenced to baker's percent format and to calculate the thickness factor.

First, you have to convert all of the ingredients to baker's percent format. All baker's percents other than the flour, which is always 100% (by definition), are with respect to the weight of flour. So, for the formulation under discussion, if the weight of water is 720 grams, then its baker's percent is equal to 720/900, or 80%. Doing the same calculations for the rest of the ingredients will give you their respective baker's percents. The only wrinkle is the barley malt. Since the article apparently doesn't say whether the barley malt is dry or liquid, or whether it is diastatic or non-diastatic, I will assume that it is non-diastatic and liquid for our purposes, and intended as a sugar substitute. One teaspoon of a typical barley malt syrup weighs 0.2469135 ounces. To convert that to grams, multiply that number by 28.35 (since one ounce weighs 28.35 grams). That comes to 6.99999 grams for the single teaspoon of barley malt syrup. If you divide that number by 900, the baker's percent is 0.77776%.

Second, to use the expanded dough calculating tool at

http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html


for data formatting purposes, you need to add up the weights of all of the ingredients. For the formulation under discussion, that is 1694.499 grams. That number should be used in the expanded dough calculating tool using the grams Dough Weight option. Then the baker's percents are entered into the tool. Doing all this yields the following:

Flour (W 250) (100%):
Water (80%):
CY (0.50%):
Salt (2%):
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (5%):
Non-Diastatic Barley Malt Syrup (0.77776%):
Total (188.27776%):
900 g  |  31.75 oz | 1.98 lbs
720 g  |  25.4 oz | 1.59 lbs
4.5 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs |
18 g | 0.63 oz | 0.04 lbs | 3.22 tsp | 1.07 tbsp
45 g | 1.59 oz | 0.1 lbs | 10 tsp | 3.33 tbsp
7 g | 0.25 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp
1694.5 g | 59.77 oz | 3.74 lbs | TF = N/A
Note: For three 30cm x 35cm trays; no bowl residue compensation

Third, to calculate the thickness factor, you first have to convert the dimensions of the tray to inches. The dimensions given for the tray are 30cm x 35cm. Since one inch is equal to 2.54 cm, if you divide 30 and 35 by 2.54, you will end up with 11.81" x 13.78". If you multiply those numbers together, you will end up with the surface area of the tray. In this case, it will be 162.7362 square inches. That number will be used to calculate the thickness factor. However, there is one step left. Since the total dough weight is intended to be used for three trays, we have to divide the total dough weight, in ounces, by 3. So, in our case, one tray of dough weighs 59.77 ounces (from the above table) and when that number is divided by 3 we get 19.9233 ounces.

Finally, to get the thickness factor, we divide 19.9233 by the surface area of the tray, i.e., 162.7362. That gives us the thickness factor of 0.12243. That value might change slightly if a dry non-diastatic malt were used, or if a diastatic malt were intended. The numbers would have to be re-run in such a case. However, now that I have shown you how to do the math, hopefully you would be able to do the math yourself in such a case.

For those who are interested, I used the Google translator at http://translate.google.com/#it|en|. I selected Italian to English and entered the URL of the article at

http://profumodilievito.blogspot.com/2009/11/la-pizza-in-teglia-croccante.html


into the translation box.

Peter

Thanks Peter for taking the time to explain to me what to do.

Norma