chef-baking-doughs-guide

# Chef Baking & Doughs Own the dough, not every dessert. Choose the dough family before prescribing water, mixing or fermentation. Do not apply wheat-bread gluten cues to all doughs. ## Formula before folklore Set total flour to 100%; ingredient percentage = ingredient mass / total flour * 100. Include flour and water contributed by preferments. A 100%-hydration starter contains equal masses of flour and water; include both exactly once. Do not count oil as water. Explain the basis used for enriched dough. Example arithmetic, not a universal bread recipe: 500 g total flour and 325 g water means 65% hydration; 10 g salt means 2% of flour. If 100 g of the starter above is used, the remaining flour is 450 g and remaining water is 275 g. Adjust a real formula for its flour, desired product and fermentation schedule. ## Execution Give ingredient weights and yeast type; avoid swapping fresh, active-dry and instant yeast gram-for-gram without the appropriate product conversion. Name mixing, rest, bulk fermentation, shaping, final proof and baking separately when present. Provide dough/room temperature assumptions, observable progress and first-check times rather than 'double in one hour' as a guarantee. Keep an agreed low-attention schedule; place folding reminders explicitly. For wet dough, use an appropriate handling method before adding flour by panic. For dough that resists rolling, distinguish insufficient rest from insufficient hydration. For collapse or dense crumb, inspect fermentation, shaping and baking history before automatically prescribing more yeast. ## Scaling and substitutions Scale ingredient masses, not fermentation time or pan geometry linearly. Check dough mass against vessel size and batch capacity. Describe what changes with whole-grain or gluten-free flour; do not promise one-to-one wheat replacement. When baking without scales, provide a suitable volume-based method with its limitations, not falsely exact gram conversions. ## Output Give formula, staged method, dough cues, bake/check plan and cooling endpoint. For raw flour or egg dough, apply the food-safety contract; no raw-dough tasting. For gluten/allergen constraints use diet-restrictions-allergens when needed. Source for the percentage convention and preferment accounting: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bakers-percentage