🥖 Baking
Baker's Percentage Calculator
Turn a bread formula into baker's percentages and check hydration, salt and dough weight. Press Calculate.
About the Baker's Percentage Calculator
Baker's percentage makes every ingredient a fraction of the total flour, which is always 100%. A formula with 1,000 g flour, 750 g water, 20 g salt and 10 g yeast is 75% hydration, 2% salt and 1% yeast. That is far easier to scale than a list of cups.
When a starter is part of the formula, its flour and water count toward the totals. A 200 g starter at 100% hydration adds 100 g flour and 100 g water. This calculator does that split, so the hydration figure is the true one, not just the water in the main mix.
How the calculation works
- Ingredient % = ingredient weight ÷ total flour × 100.
- Starter flour = starter ÷ (1 + starter hydration ÷ 100).
- Total flour = flour + starter flour; total water = water + starter water.
- Dough weight = total flour + total water + salt + yeast.
Reference values
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1,000 g | 100% |
| Water | 750 g | 75% |
| Salt | 20 g | 2% |
| Instant yeast | 10 g | 1% |
| Starter (100%) | 200 g | 20% |
Worked example: building 1,800 g of dough
To make 1,800 g of dough at 75% hydration with 2% salt and 1% instant yeast, let the total flour be F. The dough is F + 0.75F + 0.02F + 0.01F = 1.78F, so F = 1,011 g. Water is 758 g, salt 20 g and yeast 10 g. If a 200 g starter is used, subtract its flour and water from those totals.
This is the main reason baker's percentage is worth learning: it scales in either direction without recalculating a list of cups. Multiply every percentage by the new flour weight, and the formula is consistent. The one judgement call is the starter, which must be split into flour and water before it joins the totals.
Flour blends and total flour
When a formula uses more than one flour, the 100% is the total of all of them, not each one separately. A blend of 700 g white and 300 g wholemeal is 1,000 g total flour, so 750 g of water is 75% hydration even though the wholemeal alone would be 250%. Splitting the percentage per flour is a common source of confusion when a recipe lists two flours.
Preferments follow the same rule. A poolish made from 200 g flour and 200 g water contributes its flour to the total and its water to the hydration. Once every ingredient is expressed against the same total flour, the formula scales cleanly and can be compared with any other recipe written the same way.