Baker's Percentage Calculator
Scale any bread recipe with confidence by working in baker's percentages, where flour is always 100%.
📖 How it works & FAQ| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
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What baker's percentage means
Baker's percentage is the language professional bakers use to write and scale bread formulas. Instead of measuring everything against the whole recipe, you measure every ingredient against the flour. Flour is always 100%, and each other ingredient is expressed as its weight divided by the flour weight, times 100. If a dough uses 1000 g flour and 650 g water, the water is 65% — a number bakers instantly recognize as a moderately high-hydration dough.
Why bakers work this way
Because flour is the anchor, a formula written in percentages scales to any batch size without changing its character. Want half a loaf or a hundred loaves? Pick a new flour weight and every ingredient recalculates in the same ratio. Percentages also make recipes comparable: you can glance at two formulas and see which is saltier, richer, or wetter, even if one makes a boule and the other makes a dozen baguettes.
How to use it
- Enter your flour weight (this is always 100%) and pick a unit — grams give the most accurate results.
- Choose a mode: Weights → Percentages to analyze a recipe you already have, or Percentages → Weights to build a batch from a formula.
- Fill the ingredient rows — type weights in the first mode, or target percentages in the second.
- Use + Add ingredient for anything extra (butter, sugar, seeds, starter). Read hydration and total dough weight from the result cards.
These figures are guides for kitchen scaling, not guarantees — flour absorbency, humidity, and your own technique still shape the final dough.
FAQ
- Can baker's percentages add up to more than 100%?
- Yes, and they almost always do. Only flour equals 100%; once you add water, salt, and everything else, the total formula percentage climbs well past 100.
- How is hydration calculated?
- Hydration is your total liquid weight divided by flour weight, times 100. This tool counts rows named water, milk, egg, starter, levain, or poolish as liquids.
- What if I use multiple flours?
- Add the flours together as your 100% base for the cleanest math, or enter one flour in the main field and the others as ingredient rows to see each one's share.
- Do I have to use grams?
- No, any consistent weight unit works because percentages are ratios. Weight is far more reliable than cups, though, so a scale is strongly recommended.