What is Baker’s Percentage?
Baker’s Percentages
Baker’s percentage is the way professional bakers write recipes — every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight, not as a fixed amount. That means the same recipe scales perfectly whether you’re making one small loaf or ten. Flour is always 100%, and everything else — water, salt, yeast — is calculated relative to it. A 72% hydration dough simply means 72g of water for every 100g of flour. Once you think this way, you stop following recipes and start understanding bread. Use this calculator by entering your total flour weight and adjusting the ratios to suit your flour, your yeast, and how you want the dough to behave. The calculator does the math; you do the baking.
Ingredient calculator
Ingredients
- Higher hydration = dough ferments faster → reduce yeast slightly
- Lower hydration (stiff dough) = slower fermentation → increase yeast slightly
- Warm room → reduce yeast · Cold room → increase yeast
- Salt slows fermentation: more = slower, less = faster
- Baker’s Percentage range: 1.8%–2.2% · Standard: 1.5%–2.5% · Default: 2%
Method instructions
How to bake it
Your bake log