Baker's Percentage Calculator

Baker's percentage (or baker's math) is a professional bread formula format where every ingredient weight is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight — flour itself is always 100%. This makes it easy to scale a formula to any batch size while keeping ratios exact, since percentages are proportional regardless of total weight.

The most common baker's percentage is hydration: water weight ÷ flour weight × 100. A lean bread dough often runs 60–65% hydration, while a wetter, open-crumb bread (like ciabatta) can run 75–85% or higher. Salt is typically 1.8–2.2%, and commercial yeast is often 1–2%.

Example: a formula with 500 g flour and 350 g water has 70% hydration (350 ÷ 500 × 100). If you scale the recipe to 1,000 g flour, you would use 700 g water to keep the same 70% hydration.

Baker's percentages express every ingredient relative to flour weight at 100% — hydration is water ÷ flour × 100.

Professional bread formulas scale cleanly because percentages stay constant while batch size changes.

Example: 1000 g flour, 700 g water → 70% hydration; 20 g salt → 2% salt.

Preferment math splits flour across poolish and final dough while keeping total hydration visible. If 500 g flour includes 100 g in a 100% hydration poolish (100 g water), the final dough adds more water — track total flour as 100% across both stages. Poolish at 100% hydration splits flour and water across preferment and final dough while keeping total flour at 100% in baker's math.

Oil and butter percentages in enriched doughs (brioche, challah) often run 10–25% of flour weight. At 500 g flour and 350 g water you already have 70% hydration; adding 50 g butter (10%) changes mouthfeel without increasing water percentage unless you count butter's small water fraction. 500 g flour with 350 g water is 70% hydration — adding 50 g butter (10%) changes richness without changing the water percentage line.

Scaling a 70% hydration formula to 1500 g total flour means 1050 g water, 30 g salt at 2%, and 15 g yeast at 1% — percentages stay constant while absolute grams triple. Professional bakers scale this way before dividing into loaf counts. Tripling to 1500 g flour keeps 70% hydration at 1050 g water and 2% salt at 30 g — percentages stay constant while batch size grows.