🍞 Baker's Percentage Calculator
Enter your flour and the other ingredients by weight, and get each one as a baker's percentage plus the dough hydration — the language of every serious bread recipe.
| Ingredient | Grams | Baker's % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flour | 500 | 100% | |
| 70% | |||
| 2% | |||
| 1% |
Hydration
70%
liquid ÷ flour
Total dough weight
865 g
Baker's percentages express every ingredient relative to the flour (always 100%). Hydration counts rows named water/milk/juice/beer. A lean bread is ~60–65% hydration; ciabatta and focaccia run 75%+. 🔒 In your browser.
How the baker's percentage calculator works
In baker's percentage, the flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight: an ingredient’s weight ÷ flour weight × 100. Hydration is the total liquid (water, milk) as a percentage of flour. This lets you scale a formula to any batch size and compare recipes on equal terms.
Percentages can total well over 100% — that’s normal, because each is relative to the flour, not to the whole. A lean bread dough runs about 60–65% hydration; rustic, open-crumb loaves like ciabatta and focaccia go to 75% and beyond.
Frequently asked questions
What is baker's percentage?
A way of writing recipes where the flour is 100% and every other ingredient is a percentage of the flour weight. So 350 g water with 500 g flour is 70% water. It makes scaling and comparing bread formulas easy.
What is dough hydration?
The weight of liquid (water, milk) as a percentage of the flour. 500 g flour with 350 g water is 70% hydration. Higher hydration gives a wetter, stickier dough and a more open crumb.
Why can the percentages add up to more than 100%?
Because each is measured against the flour, not the total. Flour is 100% by definition, water might be 70%, salt 2% and so on — they’re independent ratios, so the sum can exceed 100%.
What hydration should my bread be?
Around 60–65% for a standard sandwich loaf, 70% for many artisan breads, and 75–85% for ciabatta, focaccia and high-hydration sourdough. Higher hydration is harder to handle but gives an airier crumb.
How do I scale a recipe with baker's percentages?
Choose your total flour weight, then multiply it by each ingredient’s percentage. Want 1 kg of flour at 70% hydration and 2% salt? That’s 700 g water and 20 g salt. The percentages stay fixed at any batch size.