A little help in the kitchen
Baker's percentage calculator
Baker’s percentages express every ingredient as a percentage of the flour weight, with flour always at 100%. Enter weights to see percentages and hydration, or start from percentages to get grams.
Example: 1 kg loaf
| Ingredient | Baker’s % | Grams |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 100 | 578 |
| Water | 70 | 405 |
| Salt | 2 | 12 |
| Instant yeast | 1 | 5.8 |
| Total | 173 | 1000 |
Flour = 1000 g × 100 ÷ 173 = 578 g. Every other ingredient = flour × its percentage ÷ 100. Rounded grams can differ slightly from the total.
What a baker’s percentage is
A baker’s percentage gives each ingredient’s weight as a percentage of the flour weight. Flour is always 100%: if a dough uses several flours, together they make 100%. The maths works by weight, never by volume, and the percentages add up to more than 100 because flour alone takes the first 100.
That makes it different from a batch percentage, where each ingredient is a share of the whole dough. King Arthur Baking’s example is pound cake: equal weights of flour, butter, eggs and sugar are 25% each of the batch but 100% each in baker’s percentages.
The formula
Baker’s percentage (%) = ingredient weight (g) ÷ flour weight (g) × 100
Ingredient weight (g) = flour weight (g) × baker’s percentage ÷ 100
Hydration (%) = water (g) ÷ flour (g) × 100
King Arthur Baking counts water and water-rich liquids such as milk or beer towards hydration, but not oil, melted butter or honey. It also leaves rolled oats, flakes and cracked grains out of the flour. In the calculator, give milk the water role and those other ingredients the other role. For more on what hydration does to a dough, see dough hydration explained.
Worked example: recipe to percentages and back
Take a loaf of 400 g bread flour, 100 g wholemeal flour, 360 g water, 10 g salt and 5 g instant yeast. The flour totals 500 g, so each ingredient’s percentage is its weight ÷ 500 × 100. To go back to grams, multiply any new flour weight by each percentage and divide by 100, as in the last column.
| Ingredient | Recipe (g) | Baker’s % | Scaled to 800 g flour (g) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 400 | 80 | 640 |
| Wholemeal flour | 100 | 20 | 160 |
| Water | 360 | 72 | 576 |
| Salt | 10 | 2 | 16 |
| Instant yeast | 5 | 1 | 8 |
| Total | 875 | 175 | 1,400 |
Scaling to a target dough weight
Usually you know how much dough you want, not how much flour. Divide by the sum of the percentages:
Flour (g) = target dough weight (g) × 100 ÷ sum of all percentages
Two 700 g loaves need 1,400 g of dough. The formula above sums to 175%, so flour = 1,400 × 100 ÷ 175 = 800 g, which gives the right-hand column. King Arthur Baking’s professional method writes the same step as a factor (1,400 ÷ 175 = 8 g per percentage point) and rounds it up, because a little extra dough is better than too little. The calculator’s percentages mode does this for you: grams = total dough × percentage ÷ sum of all percentages. The pizza dough calculator uses the same maths for dough balls.
How sourdough starter is counted
A starter, or any other preferment, is part flour and part water. A starter weighing S grams at hydration h contains:
Starter flour (g) = S ÷ (1 + h ÷ 100)
Starter water (g) = S − starter flour (g)
This calculator treats the flour added to the final dough as 100% and lists the starter as an ingredient with its own percentage. The summary then adds the starter’s flour and water back in to show overall hydration and how much of the flour was prefermented. Take 450 g flour, 300 g water, 100 g starter at 100% hydration and 9 g salt:
Two conventions compared
| Line | Final-dough basis (this calculator) | Overall formula basis |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 450 g = 100% | 500 g = 100% |
| Water | 300 g = 66.7% | 350 g = 70% |
| Starter | 100 g = 22.2% | Split into its flour and water; 10% of the flour is prefermented |
| Salt | 9 g = 2% | 9 g = 1.8% |
| Hydration | 66.7% in the final dough, 70% overall | 70% |
The overall formula is the layout the Bread Bakers Guild of America standardised: a total formula in which all the flour, including the flour in each preferment, is 100%; a column for each preferment; and a final dough equal to the total minus the preferments. King Arthur Baking calls the same idea overall baker’s percent. Both describe the same dough, but the numbers differ: Pizza Today’s Detroit-style dough is 63% water on its final-dough flour and 67% once its poolish is counted. When you share a formula, say which basis you used. Practice varies for tiny seed cultures, too: King Arthur Baking’s example leaves 16 g of culture in a 1,400 g batch out of the hydration. For preferment types and timings, see poolish, biga and levain compared.
Typical percentages
These are starting ranges: style, flour and fermentation schedule all move them.
| Ingredient | Typical baker’s % | Context and source |
|---|---|---|
| Salt | 1.8–2.2% | Most breads (King Arthur Baking). Tom Lehmann’s pizza formulas use 1.75–2%; the AVPN allows Neapolitan dough up to about 3.75%. |
| Instant yeast, long or cold rise | 0.2–0.5% | Dough fermented overnight or for days. Lehmann’s typical pizza figure is 0.375%. |
| Instant yeast, same-day dough | 1–1.5% | King Arthur Baking’s Sicilian pizza uses 1.1%; Red Star’s 7 g packet raises up to about 450 g (4 cups) of flour. |
| Sugar, lean dough | 0–2% | Lehmann uses 2% in pizza; King Arthur Baking’s lean bread examples use none. |
| Sugar, enriched dough | About 10% | Brioche (King Arthur Baking). Above 10% sugar slows fermentation, and Lesaffre sells a separate instant yeast for doughs from 5% sugar. |
| Fat | 0–5% in lean dough, about 50% in brioche | Lehmann’s pan pizza uses 4% fat; King Arthur Baking’s ciabatta example uses 5% olive oil and its brioche 50% butter. |
Keep the formula with your recipes
CookBook saves recipes from websites, social posts, photos and cookbooks and organises them. In cooking mode you can change servings and the measurement system; ingredient amounts scale, but cooking time does not.
Sources
- King Arthur Baking: Baker's Percentage (professional reference)
- King Arthur Baking: What is baker's math, and how can I use it in my everyday bread baking?
- King Arthur Baking: Yeast (professional reference)
- King Arthur Baking: Sicilian-Style Pizza
- King Arthur Baking: Ingredient weight chart
- The Bread Bakers Guild of America: Formula Layout Standards, Bread Lines 2009 (PDF)
- The Bread Bakers Guild of America: Formula formatting
- Pizza Today: Detroit-Style Pizza Dough (John Arena)
- Pizza Today: Dough Doctor: Back to Basics (Tom Lehmann)
- PMQ Pizza: The secrets of instant dry yeast (Tom Lehmann)
- PMQ Pizza: Q&A with the Dough Doctor (Tom Lehmann)
- AVPN: International Regulations for Verace Pizza Napoletana (PDF)
- Red Star Yeast: Yeast conversion chart
- Lesaffre, SAF-Instant: Craft baking
A little more help
Frequently asked questions
What starter hydration should I enter?
Enter the ratio of water to flour you feed your starter. Equal weights of flour and water is 100%, and 50 g water to 100 g flour is 50%. The calculator uses it to split the starter: 100 g of starter at 100% holds 50 g flour and 50 g water, while at 50% it holds about 67 g flour and 33 g water.
Can I enter a poolish or biga instead of a sourdough starter?
Yes. The starter role works for any preferment made of flour and water. Enter its own hydration: a poolish, which the Bread Bakers Guild of America describes as 100% hydration, is 100%, and a stiffer preferment is lower. The small amount of yeast in a preferment is left out of the flour and water split.
Do seeds, oats and soakers count as flour?
King Arthur Baking generally leaves rolled oats, flakes and cracked grains out of the flour total, so give them the other role and they appear as a percentage of the flour. The Bread Bakers Guild of America writes a soaker as its own small formula, with the grains at 100% and the water set so the soaked grains release no extra water into the dough, which the guild calls hydration neutral.
Why does my percentages-mode result not match the total exactly?
Each ingredient is rounded for display, so the rounded grams can add up to a gram or two more or less than the total you entered. The underlying calculation uses the exact values.
Still have a question? Visit our help centre.
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“Baker's percentage calculator”, CookBook Manager. Updated . https://cookbookmanager.com/tools/bakers-percentage-calculator
Text, tables and data on this page are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). Credit CookBook Manager and link to this page when you reuse them.
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