New Excel template for recipe formatting

[Mike Nolan]

I've been playing around with a new Excel spreadsheet format for recipes, here's where it stands at the moment.

The recipe is entered using baker's percentages, then you enter the total dough weight you want to produce and the number of pieces it makes. What's new in this version is ingredient cost information. Package size is for things like cookies, where you might package them by the dozen. The fields you can adjust are all in yellow.

Here's an example using Hamelman's bagel recipe from his book, sized for 9 bagels a little over 3 ounces each before baking. (But if you make larger bagels or more per batch, you only have to change one or two fields to update the whole spreadsheet.)

It does not include any toppings, the cost of running the oven, or any labor. (Toppings could be added, but I usually make two or three different types of bagels, so I'd need separate costing formulas for each type, it looks like putting cheese on top adds as much as 15 cents per bagel, poppy seeds are probably less.)

The cost of the ingredients in the poaching liquid isn't included, either. (I usually put a tablespoon or so of honey in the poaching liquid these days, having been convinced by some BBGA members not to use baking soda.)

This is a simple one-stage formula, I'm planning to expand this to handle multi-stage formulas (for example, with a pre-ferment or starter.) Another possible area for expansion is to include nutritional information, which requires having an ingredients database.

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[Mike Nolan]

Here's my first crack at a multi-stage formula with costing, using a buns recipe posted on the BBGA forum recently.

You can do things like tinker with the overall hydration level, the percentage of the total flour in the preferment, the hydration level of the preferment, the desired dough quantity and the yield.

If you're interested in trying this recipe (I haven't tried it yet, but will tomorrow), the preferment should sit for 12 hours. Bulk proof for an hour, final proof for 90 minutes and bake for 20 minutes at 380, with steam if possible. I think the baking time might be a bit long, but as I noted, I haven't tried this recipe yet.

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