About the Baker's Percentage
Bread and pizza dough recipes scale strangely in cups and tablespoons, but bakers solved that problem generations ago by expressing every ingredient as a percentage of the flour weight, which stays fixed at 100% no matter the batch size.
How It Works
Enter a flour weight along with hydration, salt, and yeast percentages, and the calculator multiplies each percentage against the flour weight to find exactly how many grams of water, salt, and yeast the formula calls for.
Formula & Methodology
Flour is always the reference point at 100%, so a stated hydration of 62% simply means the water weighs 62% of whatever the flour weighs. The calculator applies that same logic to salt and yeast, multiplying the flour weight by each percentage in turn, then sums flour, water, salt, and yeast for the total dough weight. Because every figure is relative to flour rather than to a fixed batch size, the same formula scales cleanly from a single pizza to a dozen loaves just by changing the flour weight input.
Step-by-Step: Calculating It By Hand
- 1Set the flour weight to whatever total flour the recipe or desired batch size calls for.
- 2Set hydration as a percentage of that flour weight (58-62% for firmer dough, 70%+ for a more open, artisan crumb).
- 3Set salt, typically 2-2.5% of flour weight, and yeast, typically 0.5-1.5% depending on desired rise speed.
- 4Multiply each percentage by the flour weight to get the ingredient's gram weight, then add them all together for total dough weight.
Examples
Standard pizza dough
500g flour at 62% hydration, 2.5% salt, and 1% yeast needs 310g water, 12.5g salt, and 5g yeast, for about 827.5g of total dough.
Higher-hydration artisan loaf
500g flour at 75% hydration needs 375g water instead of 310g, producing a wetter, stickier dough that bakes into a more open, airy crumb.
Advantages
- Scales a formula to any batch size just by changing the flour weight
- Lets bakers compare formulas across recipes independent of how much dough each one makes
- Separates hydration, salt, and yeast so each can be adjusted without recalculating the whole recipe
Common Mistakes
- Confusing baker's percentage with percentage of total dough weight, which is a different and less useful number
- Pushing hydration too high for the flour's protein content without adjusting technique, resulting in dough that won't hold shape
- Forgetting that yeast percentage also needs to shift with fermentation time and room temperature, not just dough type
Common Use Cases
- Scaling a pizza dough formula from a home batch to a larger party quantity
- Comparing a lean bread formula against an enriched dough with butter and eggs
- Adjusting hydration up or down to change crumb texture without rewriting the whole recipe