BakerybenchProduction
German Semmel Formula in Baker's Percent: Three Ways to Make the Same Roll
The Semmel is the standard wheat roll in Germany. It is a simple dough of flour, water, a little milk and butter, salt, malt and yeast. This page gives the formula in baker's percent and the three ways a bakery makes it: through the cooler, direct, or through the freezer.
The formula
| Ingredient | Baker's % | Per 500 g flour |
|---|---|---|
| Wheat flour (type 550) | 100 % | 500 g |
| Water | 50 % | 250 g |
| Whole milk | 10 % | 50 g |
| Butter | 2 % | 10 g |
| Salt | 2 % | 10 g |
| Malt extract | 2.4 % | 12 g |
| Fresh yeast | 1.2 % | 6 g |
| Total | 167.6 % | 838 g |
The formula is one dough, so there is nothing to add up from pre-doughs. For 500 g of wheat flour (type 550) the dough has 250 g of water, 50 g of whole milk, 10 g of butter, 10 g of salt, 12 g of malt extract and 6 g of fresh yeast, 838 g in total. Water is 250 ÷ 500 × 100 = 50 %, and with the milk the liquid is 60 %.
Scaled to bakery batches
| Ingredient | 1 kg flour | 10 kg flour | 25 kg flour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat flour (type 550) | 1,000 g | 10,000 g | 25,000 g |
| Water | 500 g | 5,000 g | 12,500 g |
| Whole milk | 100 g | 1,000 g | 2,500 g |
| Butter | 20 g | 200 g | 500 g |
| Salt | 20 g | 200 g | 500 g |
| Malt extract | 24 g | 240 g | 600 g |
| Fresh yeast | 12 g | 120 g | 300 g |
| Dough | 1,676 g | 16,760 g | 41,900 g |
How the numbers are calculated
- Add the percentages. 100 + 50 + 10 + 2 + 2 + 2.4 + 1.2 = 167.6 %. Total dough weight is always flour weight × 1.676.
- From the dough you want to the flour you need. Flour = dough weight ÷ 1.676. For 12 rolls of 70 g you need 840 g of dough, so 840 ÷ 1.676 = 501 g of flour.
- From the flour to each ingredient. Ingredient = flour × percent ÷ 100. With 501 g of flour: water 250 g, whole milk 50 g, butter 10 g, salt 10 g, malt extract 12 g, fresh yeast 6 g.
- Pieces from a batch. 10 kg of flour makes 16,760 g of dough. At 70 g per piece that is 239 pieces.
You can do the same with the baker's percentage calculator: enter the percentages above and tick flour and liquid.
Decoration
Decoration is part of the formula. The recipe is only complete with the dusting and the finish, so they belong in the recipe and in the costing. They are not part of the dough weight or the baker's percent above, and in many bakeries they are forgotten in the costing.
- Toppings: the plain wheat roll is normally made without any topping. In Germany the usual variants are the Kaiser roll topped with coarse salt (compacted hail salt, German "Hagelsalz") and rolls with poppy seed or sesame.
- No spraying: wheat rolls like this one are not sprayed with water. Spraying is done on rustic dark rye rolls, and then after baking, because spraying before baking gives a weaker shine.
In the bakery
- Dough temperature and mixing: a dough temperature of 22 °C, as for other rolls, set with the mixing water, with flake ice instead of water if the water is too warm. Use only crushed, slightly crumbly flake ice, never hard ice, which damages the dough structure and the gluten network. In a Diosna mixer, 3 minutes slow and 6 or 7 minutes fast. This is a craft bakery process and not an industrial one.
- Route 1, through the cooler (best rolls): keep the bench rest almost at nothing and process the dough "green", then let the dough pieces stand in the cooler for 24 hours. This gives the best rolls.
- Route 2, direct: let the whole dough stand for 2 hours at room temperature, then process it. The dough pieces get a proof of 45 minutes.
- Route 3, through the freezer: make the dough directly with 5 % fresh yeast, and if needed up to 6 %, which depends on the conditions in your bakery. Let it rest for only 10 minutes, process it straight away and freeze the pieces. Frozen pieces go back into the cooler for another 12 hours, or straight into the proofer for 1 hour, and then they rise. They never go from the freezer straight into the oven.
- Setting before the oven: after the cooler, and after the proof on the direct route, the pieces stand for at least 15 minutes to set (skin over) before they go into the oven. If the baker only loads them after 30 minutes, that is fine too.
- Baking: bake at 250 °C, falling to 230 °C, for about 10 minutes. Give steam in the first minute, then pull the draft and let the steam escape. The rest of the baking time is without steam. This steam routine is the same for all rolls and all breads. For white rolls, white breads and other light bakes that need a lot of volume, pre-steam is an option: a first amount of steam goes into the oven chamber, the oven is opened, the product is loaded, the oven is closed again and the main steam is given afterwards. On rye it does little. It can also help to rescue an over-proofed dough or loaves that sink during baking: raise the oven temperature a little and add some steam, which keeps the surface moist so the loaf expands a bit more.
- Piece weight: 70 g per dough piece as in the home recipe, 12 pieces from the dough in the table.
- Cooling: let the rolls cool a little before you handle or pack them. The starch network is not yet stable while the crumb is hot.
Things to watch
- The milk is counted as liquid in full, as in the home recipe. Water alone is 50 % of the flour, water and milk together are 60 %.
- The home recipe uses malt extract, with honey as an alternative. This page uses malt extract.
- The yeast in the table, 1.2 %, is for routes 1 and 2. On route 3 the yeast is raised to 5 % or a little more.
- Weigh salt, malt extract and yeast on a scale with a suitable resolution, especially for small batches.
- Most common faults in the bakery: dough too warm; waited too long; proof too long, so the pieces over-proof; dough pieces handled again and collapsing; pieces kept too long in the freezer or cooler; wrong oven temperature; steam forgotten; baked too long, so the rolls are dry or too dark; rolls handled straight after baking.
- Dull surface: dough too warm, trays or proofing carriers dusted too heavily, a dry proof, or too little steam. Keep the dough cooler, dust less, raise the humidity in the proof and give enough steam.
- Hollow, pulled-in bottom: proof too full or baking temperature too low, especially when baking on paper or foil. Load a little earlier and raise the temperature.
- After the cooler or the freezer: uneven browning and dry spots come from partial drying in storage, dark browning from storage that is too warm or too long, and a loose crust from too thick a crust or too long in the freezer. Store covered and as short as possible.