Moisture Loss

[quote="TeckPoh"]Hi

Now that I've started selling buns (it's only to a handful of regular must-have-TP's bread-friends), I thought I'd post the weight of the buns with the prices. However, I find it's not that easy.

For the small buns of finished baked weight of 75g, over a few weeks' experience, I find that I need a pre-baked weight of 84g...which means a loss of 10% moisture.

Yesterday, I decided to offer mini loaves of finished weight 300g. I thought I'd do fine with a pre-baked weight of 314g. Nope. That baked off to 267g working out to 15% moisture loss. Wow. I guess it must be the bigger surface area of a larger bread.

How do you guys determine how much dough to divide for the finished weight you want? Is there a formula or is it through trial and error?

Thanks.[/quote]

TP, depending on the type of bread you are making - longer fermentation produces greater losses approx 1.2%. The equipment you are using - scale accuracy etc, at home another 1-2%, ability of the oven as a store of heat, as domestic ovens are notorious for not producing 'solid' heat which means longer slower bake which will mean greater moisture loss. Perhaps you should calculate approx 12-17% loss in the oven. But you should also take the others into account too, especially if you start to make some volume.