Baker's Percentage Calculator 🥖

Flour is always 100%. All other ingredients are expressed as a percentage of the flour weight. Change weight to recalculate %, or change % to recalculate weight.

Baker's percentage (also called baker's math or formula percentage) is the standard way professional bakers describe a bread or pastry recipe. Every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight, and flour is always 100%. The Baker's Percentage Calculator lets you enter ingredient weights and instantly see the percentages, or enter percentages and let the calculator return the weights. This makes it trivial to scale a 500g recipe to 5 kg, compare the hydration of two ciabatta recipes side by side, or swap a portion of bread flour for whole wheat without breaking the structure. The calculator dynamically adds new rows for water, salt, yeast, sugar, butter, eggs, and any other ingredient, and gives you the running total dough weight. It is the same math taught in professional baking schools and used in published bread textbooks worldwide — once you understand it, every bread recipe in the world becomes readable.

How to Use the Baker's Percentage Calculator

  1. Enter Flour Weight — Enter the total flour weight in grams. Flour is always 100%.
  2. Add Ingredients — Add water, salt, yeast, and other ingredients with their weights.
  3. Read Percentages — Each ingredient's baker's percentage is calculated automatically. Change a percentage and the weight updates too.
  4. Adjust Hydration — The water percentage is your hydration. Lean breads sit at 60–75%; ciabatta and focaccia run 80–90%. Adjust water until you hit your target hydration.
  5. Scale the Recipe — Change the flour weight and every other ingredient updates automatically — the percentages stay the same. Use this to scale from a 500g test loaf to a 5 kg production batch.

Formula Reference

Baker's percentage of an ingredient = (ingredient weight ÷ total flour weight) × 100. Total flour always equals 100%, even if you blend several flours together. Hydration % = (total water ÷ total flour) × 100, where total water includes water released from preferments, levain, soakers, and milk (≈87% water). Salt is typically 1.8–2.2%, instant yeast 0.5–1.0%, sugar 0–10% for lean breads and 10–25% for enriched. Total dough weight = sum of all ingredient weights = flour weight × (1 + sum of all other percentages ÷ 100).

Source: Jeffrey Hamelman, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, 3rd ed. (Wiley, 2021); Didier Rosada, San Francisco Baking Institute formula sheets.

FAQ

Can baker's percentage exceed 100%?

Yes! A 100% hydration means the water weight equals the flour weight. High-hydration breads like ciabatta can reach 80–90% hydration.

How do I handle multiple flour types?

Add all flours together as the 100% base. For example, 400g bread flour + 100g whole wheat = 500g total flour = 100%.

How is salt percentage calculated?

Salt is calculated against total flour weight. The standard is 1.8–2.2% for most breads. For 1000g flour, that's 18–22g of salt. Below 1.5% the bread tastes flat; above 2.5% it slows fermentation noticeably.

What hydration should I use for my first sourdough?

Start at 65–70% hydration. The dough is firm enough to shape easily and forgiving of timing mistakes. Once you can handle that confidently, work up to 75–80% for a more open crumb.

Does baker's percentage work for cakes and pastry?

Partially. It works well for any flour-based formula, but pastry recipes more often use ratios (1:2:3 sablée, for example). For laminated dough like croissants, baker's math is standard: butter is typically 50% of flour weight.

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