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Ratios can be important in cooking, or baking in particular. Hence the Food::Ratio perl module which allows one to inspect recipes for their ratios.
https://metacpan.org/pod/Food::Ratio
Take, for example, a random rye bread recipe found on the internet, by way of Amanda Paa:
What are the ratios? Generally one uses the flour as the basis for measurement, so a 60% hydration bread might have 1000 grams of flour and 600 grams of water. This recipe has three different types of flour, but we can group them them all together, and calculate the ratios from that. With a text file:
27.5 starter1 dry flour
27.5 starter2 wet
280 water wet
100 rye dry flour
260 breadflour dry flour
40 wholewheat dry flour
7 salt dry
that is piped to foodratio (part of the Food::Ratio perl module):
$ foodratio --ratio group:flour < ryebread
27.5 6.433% starter1 dry flour
27.5 6.433% starter2 wet
280 65.5% water wet
100 23.39% rye dry flour
260 60.82% breadflour dry flour
40 9.357% wholewheat dry flour
7 1.637% salt dry
--
434.5 101.6% dry
427.5 100% flour
307.5 71.93% wet
--
742 173.6% *total
Here the sourdough starter is assumed to be 100% hydration (this may not be the case; hydration can range from 50% to 500%, depending) and the honey was ignored. The main takeaway is that this is a ~70% hydration loaf, and the salt percentage is pretty typical (0.5% to 2% is common). You might find other rye breads with 80% hydration, in which case you will probably not be pouring that into a dutch oven, but rather might use an oiled bread pan. A loaf with lower hydration may not suit a dutch oven, which is used to steam the loaf using the water it contains.
Another use for ratios is to scale a recipe up, or down: what if we had 154 grams of rye flour to use up?
$ foodratio --mass 154 --weigh id:rye < ryebread
42.35 3.706% starter1 dry flour
42.35 3.706% starter2 wet
431.2 37.74% water wet
154 13.48% rye dry flour
400.4 35.04% breadflour dry flour
61.6 5.391% wholewheat dry flour
10.78 0.9434% salt dry
--
669.1 58.56% dry
658.4 57.61% flour
473.6 41.44% wet
--
1142.68 100% *total
One could also target the maximum mass a bread pan can accept, or etc.
Perhaps you have been feeding a starter with 10 grams of the existing starter, 50 grams of flour, and 40 grams of water. Those 10 grams of starter have roughly 5.556 grams of flour and 4.444 grams of water in them, assuming the ratio has been maintained for a while.
$ cat starter
50 flour flour
40 water wet
$ foodratio --mass 10 starter
5.556 55.56% flour flour
4.444 44.44% water wet
--
5.556 55.56% flour
4.444 44.44% wet
--
10 100% *total
This may be important when incorporating the starter into a dough, for example to hit a 60% hydration with 10 grams of starter one would need to use roughly 4.5 grams less water and 5.5 grams less flour. If large amounts of starter is used then this accounting for the water present in the starter will become more important.
$ cat starter2
5.556 starter-flour flour
4.444 starter-water wet
50 flour flour
40 water wet
$ foodratio --mass 40 starter2
2.222 5.556% starter-flour flour
1.778 4.444% starter-water wet
20 50% flour flour
16 40% water wet
--
22.22 55.56% flour
17.78 44.44% wet
--
40 100% *total
Perhaps we are aiming for an 80% hydration rye bread using the sourdough starter, with a total flour mass of 300 grams... how much starter is that, and how much less flour and water should be used? This can be fiddled around with, for example you might use even less starter...
$ foodratio --mass 300 --weigh group:flour < sourrye
286.7 52.5% rye flour
229.3 42% water wet
13.33 2.442% starter-flour flour starter
10.67 1.954% starter-water wet starter
6 1.099% salt
--
300 54.95% flour
240 43.96% wet
24 4.396% starter
--
546 100% *total
tags #perl