How to use the bakers percentage calculator
- Pick Weights to percents if you have a recipe in weights, or Percents to weights if you have bakers percentages and want amounts. Choose the weight unit.
- Enter the total weight of flour. If a recipe uses several flours, add them together, because flour is the 100% base.
- In weights mode, enter the water and then each other ingredient with its weight. In percents mode, enter the hydration and each ingredient as a percent of flour.
- In percents mode you can enter the total dough weight instead of the flour weight, and the tool works out the flour that makes that much dough.
Formula
Bakers percentage = ingredient weight / flour weight x 100
Hydration = water weight / flour weight x 100
Ingredient weight = flour weight x percent / 100
Flour weight from a dough weight = dough weight / (1 + sum of all other percents / 100)
Flour is always 100%, so the percentages add up to more than 100. Totals are not shown as a share of the dough.
A 70% hydration dough
A dough uses 500 g of flour, 350 g of water, 10 g of salt and 3 g of instant yeast. Water is 350 / 500 = 70%, salt is 2% and yeast is 0.6%. The dough weighs 863 g and the percentages add up to 172.6%.
Going the other way, say you want 1,000 g of dough with 70% water, 2% salt and 0.6% yeast. The other percents add up to 72.6%, so flour is 1,000 / 1.726 = 579.37 g. That gives 405.56 g of water, 11.59 g of salt and 3.48 g of yeast.
Why bakers use percentages
Percentages relative to flour make recipes easy to scale and compare. Doubling a dough means doubling the flour and keeping every percent the same. Two doughs can be compared at a glance: 65% hydration is stiffer than 80% hydration whatever size the batch is.
They also make it easy to change one thing at a time. Raise water from 70% to 75% and the other ingredients stay put. For a different problem, see the yeast conversion calculator when a recipe names the wrong type of yeast.
Prefermented dough and mix-ins
A starter or poolish contains both flour and water. This tool treats every row as a plain ingredient, so for an exact overall hydration, split the preferment into its flour and water and add them to the flour and water totals.
Use weights, not cups. Flour packed differently can differ by 20% or more in the same cup, which is why the percentages here are based on weight. If you only have volume measures, the ingredient grams to cups converter can help.
Assumptions and limits
- Flour weight is the base for every percentage. Blends of flour are added together.
- All weights are in the unit you choose, so do not mix grams and ounces in one recipe.
- Water in a preferment, milk and eggs are only counted as water if you add them to the water row.
- Percentages and weights are shown to two decimals.
Frequently asked questions
What is a bakers percentage?
It is each ingredient weight divided by the total flour weight, times 100. Flour is therefore always 100%, and a dough with 350 g of water for 500 g of flour is at 70%.
What is hydration in bread?
Hydration is the water weight as a percent of the flour weight. It tells you how wet the dough is, regardless of the batch size.
Why do the percentages add up to more than 100?
Each percent is measured against flour alone, not against the whole dough. Flour counts as 100, and everything else adds to it, so a dough totals well over 100.
How do I scale a recipe with this?
Convert it to percents with the weights mode, then use the percents mode with the new flour weight or the new total dough weight. Every ingredient scales in proportion.