π Baker's Percentage Calculator
Turn any bread recipe into baker's percentages: hydration, salt, and yeast ratios in seconds.
Baker's Percentages
How to Use This Baker's Percentage Calculator
Baker's percentage is the language professional bakers use to write recipes: flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight. A dough with 500 grams of flour and 325 grams of water is 65% hydration. Type in your flour weight, add each ingredient with its weight in grams, and this calculator returns the full formula instantly.
Weigh your flour in grams and enter it. If the recipe lists cups, convert first: all-purpose flour is about 120 grams per US cup, bread flour about 127.
Add each remaining ingredient with the + Add button: water, salt, yeast or starter, sugar, butter, oil, eggs, milk. Enter every weight in grams.
Hit Calculate Percentages. Each line shows the ingredient's share of flour weight, and the headline number is the total dough yield, normally 160 to 180%.
Copy the formula to scale it: multiply every weight by the same factor and the percentages never change. That is the entire point of baker's math.
The Baker's Percentage Formula
The math is deliberately simple. With 500 grams of flour, 350 grams of water, 10 grams of salt, and 5 grams of instant yeast: water is 350 Γ· 500 Γ 100 = 70%, salt is 10 Γ· 500 Γ 100 = 2%, yeast is 5 Γ· 500 Γ 100 = 1%. Total dough percentage is 100 + 70 + 2 + 1 = 173%. Now you can scale to any batch: want 2 kilos of flour? Every number multiplies by 4 and every percentage stays put.
Worked Example: A Simple White Loaf
Take a basic recipe: 500 grams bread flour, 325 grams water, 10 grams fine sea salt, 7 grams instant dry yeast. Enter 500 as the flour weight and add the three ingredients. The calculator returns water at 65%, salt at 2%, and yeast at 1.4%, for a total dough of 168.4%. Read those four numbers and an experienced baker knows the dough instantly: a straightforward 65%-hydration sandwich-style loaf, soft enough to shape easily, firm enough to hold its form in a pan.
Now scale it for a bakery batch of 5 kilograms of flour. Multiply every weight by 10: 3,250 grams water, 100 grams salt, 70 grams yeast. The percentages do not move. That is why bakeries write formulas this way: the head baker can hand anyone the four numbers and get identical dough from any batch size.
Reading a Formula at a Glance
Once you speak baker's percentage, recipes become transparent. A formula reading 100 / 68 / 2 / 20 (flour, water, salt, starter) is a moderately wet sourdough. Change the water to 58 and you are looking at bagel dough. See 8% sugar and 6% butter and you know it is enriched sandwich bread. This is also how you compare recipes from different books: two recipes that both read 65% hydration and 2% salt are the same dough wearing different clothes, regardless of whether one makes one loaf and the other makes twelve.
Practical Tips for Accurate Baker's Math
Weigh everything, including water. A cup of water is close to 236 grams, but close is not the point here. Treat salt with respect: the difference between 1.5% and 2.5% is the difference between bland and properly seasoned, and it is only 5 grams on a 500-gram batch. For sourdough starter at 100% hydration, split its weight in half and count one half as flour and the other as water before calculating. And remember that enrichments like butter and sugar are not part of hydration; a 70%-hydration dough with 10% butter is much softer than a lean 70% dough, even though the water number matches.
One more place baker's percentage earns its keep: troubleshooting someone else's recipe. When a bread fails, convert it to percentages and the flaw usually confesses. Hydration at 78% with all-purpose flour explains the soupy mess; salt at 3.5% explains the sluggish rise; yeast at 3% explains the yeasty, bland flavor. Percentages turn "this recipe didn't work" into a diagnosis you can fix next time, which is the real reason professionals never write recipes any other way.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest error is mixing volume and weight in one formula. A cup of honey weighs 340 grams while a cup of flour weighs 120, so cup-based percentages are meaningless. The second is forgetting that preferments count: if your recipe builds a poolish with 200 grams of flour and 200 of water, that flour and water are part of the totals. The third is treating yeast like salt: yeast percentage controls fermentation speed, not flavor balance, so doubling yeast to "make it rise faster" gives you a fast, flavorless loaf.
Worked Example: Scaling a Sourdough Up
Baker's math shines when a recipe needs to grow. Say your house sourdough is written for 1,000 grams of flour at 70% hydration, 2% salt, and 20% ripe starter, and you need 1.5 times the dough for a dinner party. The percentages do not change, only the flour does. New flour: 1,500 grams. Water: 1,500 x 0.70 = 1,050 grams. Salt: 1,500 x 0.02 = 30 grams. Starter: 1,500 x 0.20 = 300 grams. Total dough: 1,500 + 1,050 + 30 + 300 = 2,880 grams, which divides into three 960-gram loaves.
Compare that to scaling by volume, where 1.5 times "3 cups of flour" inherits every measuring error in the original and multiplies it. Weight-based scaling is exact to the gram, and the formula doubles as a sanity check: if your total dough percentage looks wrong, you will spot it before the flour hits the bowl. Write every recipe you care about in baker's percentages once, and you will never do volume scaling again.
Hydration Bands: What the Number Tells You
The hydration percentage predicts how the dough will feel in your hands before you mix it. At 55 to 60%, you are in stiff-dough territory: bagels, pretzels, and some pizza doughs that you can knead aggressively without sticking. At 60 to 65%, sandwich loaves and standard lean breads that shape cleanly and score well. At 65 to 72%, the open-crumb artisan zone: the dough is tacky, needs folding instead of kneading, and rewards a light touch with big airy holes.
Above 72% you are in high-hydration land, and the rules change. The dough will feel alarmingly wet, more like thick batter than anything shapeable, and that is normal. Strong bread flour (12.5%+ protein), an autolyse rest, and coil folds during bulk fermentation are what make it work; without them the loaf spreads into a pancake. Beginners should earn their way up: master 65%, then 68%, then 70, spending a few bakes at each step. Each band teaches a handling skill the next one assumes you have.
Preferments in Baker's Math
Preferments like poolish and biga look complicated until you see them in percentages. A classic poolish is 100% hydration with a pinch of yeast: 500 grams flour, 500 grams water, and about 1 gram of instant yeast (0.2% of the preferment's flour). It ferments 12 to 16 hours at room temperature, then joins the final dough. In the formula you simply list its flour and water as part of the totals: if the whole recipe uses 1,000 grams of flour and 700 of water, the poolish already accounts for 500 and 500, so the final mix adds the remaining 500 flour and 200 water.
The payoff is flavor and keeping quality that straight dough cannot match. The long, slow preferment builds acidity and aroma compounds while the yeast population stays young and vigorous, which is why poolish breads taste wheaty and complex with a fraction of the yeast. Track the preferment as its own mini-formula with its own percentages and the main formula stays clean. Two small recipes are easier to manage than one tangled one.
Worked Example: Scaling a Sourdough Up
Baker's math shines when a recipe needs to grow. Say your house sourdough is written for 1,000 grams of flour at 70% hydration, 2% salt, and 20% ripe starter, and you need 1.5 times the dough for a dinner party. The percentages do not change, only the flour does. New flour: 1,500 grams. Water: 1,500 x 0.70 = 1,050 grams. Salt: 1,500 x 0.02 = 30 grams. Starter: 1,500 x 0.20 = 300 grams. Total dough: 1,500 + 1,050 + 30 + 300 = 2,880 grams, which divides into three 960-gram loaves.
Compare that to scaling by volume, where 1.5 times "3 cups of flour" inherits every measuring error in the original and multiplies it. Weight-based scaling is exact to the gram, and the formula doubles as a sanity check: if your total dough percentage looks wrong, you will spot it before the flour hits the bowl. Write every recipe you care about in baker's percentages once, and you will never do volume scaling again.
Hydration Bands: What the Number Tells You
The hydration percentage predicts how the dough will feel in your hands before you mix it. At 55 to 60%, you are in stiff-dough territory: bagels, pretzels, and some pizza doughs that you can knead aggressively without sticking. At 60 to 65%, sandwich loaves and standard lean breads that shape cleanly and score well. At 65 to 72%, the open-crumb artisan zone: the dough is tacky, needs folding instead of kneading, and rewards a light touch with big airy holes.
Above 72% you are in high-hydration land, and the rules change. The dough will feel alarmingly wet, more like thick batter than anything shapeable, and that is normal. Strong bread flour (12.5%+ protein), an autolyse rest, and coil folds during bulk fermentation are what make it work; without them the loaf spreads into a pancake. Beginners should earn their way up: master 65%, then 68%, then 70, spending a few bakes at each step. Each band teaches a handling skill the next one assumes you have.
Preferments in Baker's Math
Preferments like poolish and biga look complicated until you see them in percentages. A classic poolish is 100% hydration with a pinch of yeast: 500 grams flour, 500 grams water, and about 1 gram of instant yeast (0.2% of the preferment's flour). It ferments 12 to 16 hours at room temperature, then joins the final dough. In the formula you simply list its flour and water as part of the totals: if the whole recipe uses 1,000 grams of flour and 700 of water, the poolish already accounts for 500 and 500, so the final mix adds the remaining 500 flour and 200 water.
The payoff is flavor and keeping quality that straight dough cannot match. The long, slow preferment builds acidity and aroma compounds while the yeast population stays young and vigorous, which is why poolish breads taste wheaty and complex with a fraction of the yeast. Track the preferment as its own mini-formula with its own percentages and the main formula stays clean. Two small recipes are easier to manage than one tangled one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is baker's percentage?
Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient in a dough as a percentage of the total flour weight, which is always set at 100%. If your dough has 500 grams of flour and 350 grams of water, the hydration is 70%. This system lets bakers scale recipes up or down and compare formulas instantly, since the ratios stay identical no matter the batch size.
How do you calculate baker's percentage?
Divide the weight of each ingredient by the weight of the flour, then multiply by 100. With 1,000 grams of flour and 20 grams of salt, the math is 20 divided by 1,000, times 100, which gives 2%. Weigh everything in grams with a kitchen scale. Volume measurements like cups are too inconsistent for accurate baker's math.
What is a good hydration for bread dough?
Lean white bread doughs work well at 60 to 65% hydration, which handles easily and shapes cleanly. Rustic artisan loaves run 70 to 75%, producing an open crumb with big holes. Pizza dough sits around 60 to 65%, and bagels are stiff at 55 to 58%. Wetter doughs make airier bread but are harder to shape, so beginners should start near 65%.
Why is flour always 100% in baker's percentage?
Flour is the reference point because it is the dominant ingredient in every dough, so anchoring it at 100% keeps all the other numbers small and readable. If water were the reference, flour would read as 140% and salt as 3%, which is harder to scan. With flour fixed at 100%, a glance at the numbers tells you exactly what kind of dough you are looking at.
Do baker's percentages always add up to 100%?
No, and they should not. The percentages of all ingredients added together give the total dough yield, which is always well above 100%. A typical lean dough totals around 165 to 170%: 100% flour, 65% water, 2% salt, and 1% yeast. If your total comes out near 100%, you forgot to include the flour itself.
What baker's percentage is salt in bread?
Salt runs 1.8 to 2.2% of flour weight in most bread formulas, with 2% the near-universal standard. Below 1.5% the bread tastes flat and ferments too fast; above 2.5% it starts tasting salty and can slow yeast activity. Fine sea salt and table salt weigh the same by grams, so the percentage works regardless of salt type.
How much yeast is 1% in baker's percentage?
One percent yeast means 1 gram of yeast for every 100 grams of flour, so a 500-gram-flour loaf uses 5 grams. Instant dry yeast is usually used at 0.5 to 1% for same-day doughs; slower overnight ferments drop to 0.1 to 0.3%. Active dry yeast measures about 25% more by weight for the same lift, so convert before calculating.
Can I use baker's percentage for sourdough starter?
Yes. Starter is expressed the same way: 100 grams of starter in a 500-gram-flour dough is 20%. Most sourdough formulas use 15 to 25% ripe starter relative to flour weight. When the starter is 100% hydration, half its weight counts as flour and half as water, which keeps your true hydration math honest.
Should eggs, butter, and milk count as flour or water?
They count as their own ingredients, each measured against flour weight. Eggs and milk mostly behave like water for hydration purposes, so many bakers add their weight into the total hydration figure. Butter, oil, and sugar are enrichment: they get their own percentages (typically 2 to 10%) and are not part of hydration. This calculator treats every ingredient independently.
Why do professional bakers prefer weight over cups?
A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 150 grams depending on how it was scooped, which is a 25% swing before you even start. Baker's percentage only works with weights because the whole point is exact ratios. A $15 digital scale turns guesswork into repeatable bread, which is why every bakery on earth bakes by the gram.