Global Settings
True Dough Hydration
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Add flour and liquid to calculate
Formula Builder
Final Recipe
Fill out the Formula Builder to see the sorted recipe card here.
Key Terms: Baker's Percentage Glossary
Baker's Percentage
A system where every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight, which is always fixed at 100%. Makes recipes easy to compare and scale.
True Hydration
The actual water-to-flour ratio that accounts for hidden water and flour inside a sourdough starter. More accurate than the apparent hydration read from a raw ingredient list.
Levain / Sourdough Starter
A fermented mixture of flour and water cultured with wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Used to leaven bread naturally without commercial yeast.
Autolyse
A rest period (typically 20 to 60 minutes) where flour and water are combined and left to hydrate before other ingredients are added. Improves extensibility and reduces mixing time.
Total Dough Weight (Yield)
The combined weight of all ingredients before baking. Useful for planning loaf count and for reverse-scaling a formula from a desired final yield.
Crumb
The interior texture of baked bread. High-hydration doughs tend to produce an open, irregular crumb with large holes; lower hydration yields a tighter, more uniform crumb.
Gluten Development
The formation of a protein network in dough that traps gas bubbles and gives bread its structure. Achieved through mixing, folding, time, and hydration.
Inoculation Rate
The percentage of sourdough starter relative to total flour. A higher rate speeds up fermentation; a lower rate slows it down for a longer, more flavorful result.

The Complete Guide to Baker's Percentages and Dough Hydration

Baker's percentages are the universal language of professional bread baking. Once you understand the system, you can read any recipe at a glance, predict how a dough will handle before mixing it, and confidently scale a formula from a single loaf to a full bakery batch without a spreadsheet.

How to Use This Dough Hydration Calculator

Start in the Global Settings panel. Choose your weight unit (Grams or Ounces), then pick a Scaling Mode. "Total Flour" lets you enter the flour weight directly and all other ingredient weights follow from their baker's percentages. "Target Yield" works backward: enter the total finished dough weight you need, and the calculator finds the exact flour weight required so that all ingredients sum to that target.

In the Formula Builder, adjust the baker's percentage for each ingredient. Edit the percentage and the weight updates in real time. Edit the weight and the percentage back-calculates automatically. The True Dough Hydration readout in Global Settings updates live as you work. The Final Recipe card on the right shows ingredients sorted by category and provides a one-click copy button.

Why Flour is Always 100%

In baker's math, flour is the denominator for every ratio in the formula. No matter how much or how little you use, the flour weight always represents 100%. Every other ingredient is expressed relative to that fixed base. A formula that reads "75% water" always means 75g of water for every 100g of flour, whether you are making a 300g test loaf or a 10kg production batch. The ratios hold constant at every scale.

When a formula uses more than one flour type (for example, 75% white flour and 25% whole wheat), those percentages together sum to 100%. They form the flour base. Any ingredient tagged as Flour type in this calculator contributes to that shared 100% base.

Sourdough Starter and True Hydration

A sourdough starter is not a single ingredient: it is a blend of flour and water. At 100% hydration (equal parts flour and water by weight), 100g of starter contains 50g of flour and 50g of water. Listing it as "100g starter" without splitting it will give you an inaccurate hydration reading.

This calculator decomposes the starter automatically. Enter the starter's hydration percentage on the ingredient row (default: 100%) and the True Hydration readout reflects the actual total water content (added water plus starter water) divided by the actual total flour content (added flour plus starter flour). For most sourdough formulas, true hydration runs several percentage points higher than the apparent hydration shown by the raw ingredient list.

Scaling by Target Dough Yield

Professional bakers often work backward from a target: "I need 2,000g of dough to fill three 650g loaves with pan waste." In Target Yield mode, enter that final weight and the calculator divides it by the sum of all baker's percentages to find the exact flour weight required, then calculates every other ingredient from there. This is how production runs are planned without guessing.

Frequently Asked Questions

A baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a ratio of the total flour weight, not the total recipe weight. Flour is always set to 100% as the fixed reference point. If a recipe has 500g flour and 375g water, the water is 75% (375 divided by 500, times 100). This system makes it easy to compare recipes, spot hydration at a glance, and scale any batch size without recalculating every ingredient separately.
A sourdough starter contains both flour and water, so listing its weight as a single ingredient underreports the true water and flour content. To find true hydration, first split the starter weight using its hydration percentage: starter flour = starter weight / (1 + starter hydration / 100), and starter water = starter weight minus starter flour. Add starter flour to your total flour and starter water to your total water before dividing: true hydration = (added water + starter water) / (added flour + starter flour) x 100. This calculator performs that split automatically when you add a Sourdough Starter ingredient.
Volume measures like cups vary significantly depending on how tightly flour is packed, the humidity in the room, and which brand or grind of flour you use. A cup of all-purpose flour can weigh anywhere from 120g to 160g. Weight is absolute: 500g of flour is exactly 500g every time, anywhere in the world. Professional bakers and serious home bakers use weight for consistency, especially for high-hydration doughs like sourdough where even a 5% hydration difference changes the crumb structure significantly.
For beginner bakers, a hydration of 65% to 70% is ideal. At this range, the dough is firm enough to hold its shape, easy to knead by hand, and forgiving during shaping. As your skills develop, you can increase hydration toward 75% to 80% for a more open crumb. High-hydration doughs above 80% require advanced shaping techniques like stretch-and-fold and are better tackled once you have a feel for gluten development.
Higher hydration generally produces a more open, irregular crumb with large holes, a glossy interior, and a crackly, blistered crust - the style seen in artisan sourdough. Lower hydration produces a tighter, more uniform crumb that slices cleanly, typical of sandwich loaves. Hydration also affects baking: wetter doughs produce more steam inside the crust during oven spring, contributing to a thicker and crispier exterior. The ideal hydration depends on flour type, since whole wheat and rye absorb more water than white flour.