Baker’s percentage calculator
Enter your recipe in grams to get the dough’s true hydration and the starter and salt percentages, counting the flour and water inside your starter. Free, no signup.
Hydration and baker’s percentages
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What is baker’s percentage?
Baker’s percentage writes every ingredient as a percentage of the total flour weight, with the flour at 100 percent. It lets you compare and scale recipes regardless of batch size.
How do you calculate dough hydration?
Divide the total water by the total flour and multiply by 100, counting the flour and water inside the starter. With 500 g flour, 350 g water and 100 g of a 100 percent starter, the dough has 550 g flour and 400 g water, so it is 72.7 percent hydration.
What hydration should sourdough be?
Most sourdough loaves are 65 to 75 percent hydration. Higher hydration, 75 to 85 percent, gives a more open crumb but is stickier and harder to shape, and whole-grain flour absorbs more water.
How much salt goes in bread?
About 2 percent of the flour weight, so 10 to 11 grams for 500 to 550 grams of flour.
How much starter should I use?
Most recipes use 10 to 25 percent starter by flour weight. More starter ferments faster; less gives you more time, which helps in a warm kitchen.
How do I calculate hydration with a poolish or biga?
Split the preferment into its own flour and water using its hydration, then add them to the dough’s flour and water. 200 g of poolish at 100% is 100 g flour and 100 g water, so a dough of 500 g flour, 300 g water and that poolish has 600 g flour and 400 g water: 66.7% hydration, with 16.7% of the flour prefermented. A biga at 50% splits two parts flour to one part water. Enter it in the poolish or biga field and the calculator counts it for you.
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