Turn flour weight and baker percentages into exact water, salt and total dough weights.
Usage Tip
Higher hydration gives an open, airy crumb but a wetter, harder-to-handle dough.
What is baker’s percentage?
Baker’s percentage is the way bakers describe a dough recipe: every ingredient is given as a percentage of the total flour weight, and flour itself is always 100%. So a dough with 70% water has 70 g of water for every 100 g of flour. It makes recipes easy to scale and easy to compare, no matter the batch size.
Why flour is always 100%
Flour is the backbone of bread, so it is used as the reference point. Expressing water, salt, yeast and everything else against the flour weight means two bakers can compare doughs instantly – an 80% hydration dough is wetter than a 65% one, whether you mix 200 g of flour or 20 kg.
Typical hydration by bread type
| Bread | Hydration |
|---|---|
| Bagels | 50–57% |
| Sandwich loaf | 60–65% |
| Pizza (Neapolitan) | 60–65% |
| Baguette | 65–70% |
| Sourdough (country loaf) | 70–78% |
| Ciabatta | 75–85% |
| Focaccia | 75–85% |
Higher hydration gives a more open, airy crumb but a stickier, harder-to-handle dough. Lower hydration is easier to shape and gives a tighter crumb.
Typical baker’s percentages
| Ingredient | Baker’s % |
|---|---|
| Flour | 100% (reference) |
| Water (hydration) | 60–85% |
| Salt | 1.8–2.2% |
| Instant yeast | about 1% |
| Fresh yeast | about 2–3% |
| Sourdough starter | 15–25% |
| Oil / butter (enriched) | 5–15% |
Worked example
Starting with 500 g of flour at 70% hydration and 2% salt:
- Water = 500 × 70% = 350 g
- Salt = 500 × 2% = 10 g
- Total dough = 500 + 350 + 10 = 860 g
To scale to any batch, just change the flour weight and keep the percentages the same.
How to use baker’s percentage
- Decide your flour weight – that is your 100%.
- Multiply each ingredient’s percentage by the flour weight to get grams.
- To resize a recipe, change only the flour weight; the percentages stay fixed.
- Weigh in grams for accuracy – percentages and scales go hand in hand.