<aside> 👆 Click Duplicate in the top right corner to add this template to your account.

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FAQ

BakeCent is a Notion template for curious, adventurous and nerdy cooks and bakers. It makes it easy to apply the Baker's Percentage method to (almost) any recipe.

Baker percentage

What's the deal with recipes and formulas?

Recipe

Traditional recipes use conventional measurements for ingredients, which are widely available but not always accurate. Looking at a recipe it is hard to understand the ratios of ingredients and know what the results will be like.

Formula

Formulas store percent values for all the ingredients and calculate ingredient weights on the fly based on the required total weight. It makes it easy to see the ratios of ingredients, scale up or down, or compare different formulas.

Is it just for baking?

No! A whole lot of cooking recipes can benefit from being converted into formulas. Stuff like sauces, custards, soups, fillings, and lots of other things will work too. While it would probably be an overkill to weigh lettuce for your salad*, accurate ratios are pretty important for building a good salad dressing.

*Unless it is your favorite salad recipe and you suddenly need to scale it up to a crowd of 100.

Sounds great! Where's the catch?

Two things to keep in mind:

You have to own a kitchen scale and measure your ingredients in grams. Luckily, there are plenty of really affordable models (and you'll be glad you don't have to wash all the spoons and cups after cooking).
Knowing the ratios of ingredients will make you a more powerful cook and baker. But we all know what comes with great power, right? In most cases, any adjustments made to formulas will require adjustments to techniques, tools, and cooking times to maintain proper results.

So, how does it work in Notion?

All the data lives in five database tables:

Formulas table stores the general information about the formulas, like notes, instructions, images, categories, and tags.
Ingredients table stores the ingredients, as well as the information about their density (which is used to convert volume measurements to grams), and average weight. Many common ingredients are already there, but you may want to check their values or add some new ones.
Ingredients in Formula is where the magic happens. This is a pivot table that stores the connection between ingredients and formulas. Two filtered views of this table are used in the formula pages:
- Add/Edit view is used for the initial calculations and for making changes to a formula.
- Display view is used to show the list of ingredients on a formula page and can calculate the weight of ingredients based on the selected Scale.
Scales table stores saved total formula weights, like the amount of batter needed to make just one cupcake — or three dozens of them.
Tags table stores, er, tags.

<aside> ⚠️ Unless you know what you do, don't edit any columns that perform calculations or lookups.

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Here is the process:

A new formula entry is created from a template that already has embedded views of the Ingredients in Formula and Scales tables, and filters are adjusted so that all the new entries have the correct relations.
A recipe is entered as a mix of conventional measurements in the Add/Edit view of Ingredients in Formula table.
These are automatically converted to weight in grams in a separate column.
Based on the weight in grams, and selected Anchors, percent values are automatically calculated for every ingredient.
User adds the total weight of the formula as a new entry in Scales table and marks it as selected.

<aside> 💡 It may look like a lot to remember, but don't worry, there is a neat checklist in the template itself.

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What is an Anchor Ingredient?

BakeCent is based on the idea of Baker's Percentage. In this method, flour weight is always 100%, and the amounts of other ingredients in a formula are expressed as percentages of the flour weight. Flour becomes the baseline for the whole formula.

In BakeCent we call these baseline ingredients Anchors, and you are free to choose which particular ingredient to set as an anchor.

Why use Anchors?

Storing recipe as a percent-based formula already has advantages of scalability and precision. Selecting an anchor ingredient adds a couple more:

It makes it easy to compare formulas that have similar anchors.
Adjusting formulas to one’s liking is more visual because changes to one ingredient don’t affect the values of the others.

There are three possible situations:

No Anchor

Formula totals to 100%.
When the weight of any ingredient is changed, percent values of all ingredients are adjusted to keep the 100% total.

Single Anchor

Formula totals to more than 100%.
Anchor is always 100%.
When the weight of the anchor is changed its percent stays 100%; percent values of all regular ingredients are adjusted.
When the weight of a regular ingredient is changed, only its own percent is adjusted.

Multiple Anchors

Formula totals to more than 100%.
Sum of the anchors is always equal to 100%.
When the weight of an anchor is changed, percent values of all anchor ingredients are adjusted to keep the sum of 100%; percent values of all regular ingredients are adjusted too.
When the weight of a regular ingredient is changed, only its own percent is adjusted.

How to choose an anchor?

It's up to you! If it is a baking formula, choosing flour or combination of starches as anchors is the best idea. Otherwise, think of the most prominent ingredient, the one that defines the recipe. If you were to compare two similar formulas, which ingredient would you like to see as the baseline for comparison?

What if I want to edit the percent values directly?

Editing percent values be done by adjusting the original amount and unit in the Add/Edit linked table. For example, if the original formula lists 1 tbsp of an ingredient and you want to double it, change the amount to 2 tbsp.

For more precise control, copy all the values from the Percent column, paste them into the Amount column, and change the Unit for them all to %. Keep in mind that it is best to have an anchor in your formula and only edit the percent values of non-anchor ingredients, because otherwise, the results of the calculations may be a rather confusing.

How do I make a copy of a formula?

Remember, the Formulas table only stores the general information like images, instructions, and notes. So if you want to copy a formula, you will also need to copy all the entries in the Ingredients in Formula and Scales tables. This can be done by either re-creating the formula from scratch or following the next steps:

Duplicate a formula entry and rename it. It will seem that all the ingredients and scales are in place, but actually, Notion just adds a second relation to the existing entries. This messes with calculations and is not what we want.
Select all the entries in the Ingredients in Formula linked table and duplicate them (Ctrl+D).
With duplicated entries still selected, right-click and choose Edit property > Formula.
Remove the relation to the original formula but leave the new one.
Select the original entries, right-click and choose Edit property > Formula.
Remove the relation to the new formula but leave the original one. Original entries will disappear.
Repeat steps 2-6 in the Scales linked table.

<aside> ⚠️ Similarly, if you ever want to remove a formula, first remove all the related entries from the linked tables.

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Data - do not remove

Data