Baker's Percentage Calculator

How it works

Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a percentage of the total flour weight. The flour is always 100%, so the percentages of a formula add up to more than 100%. A bread with 66% water has 66 parts of water for every 100 parts of flour; that water percentage is the dough's hydration.

From weights, each percentage is the ingredient's weight divided by the flour weight. From percentages and a flour weight, each ingredient's weight is the flour weight times its percentage. From percentages and a total dough weight, the flour weight is the dough weight divided by the sum of all the percentages (as a decimal), and every other ingredient follows from the flour.

Weights can be in any unit, as long as every ingredient uses the same one; the results come back in that unit.

Formula

percentage = ingredient weight ÷ flour weight × 100
ingredient weight = flour weight × percentage ÷ 100
flour weight = total dough weight ÷ (sum of all percentages ÷ 100)
sum of percentages = 100 + water % + salt % + yeast % + other %

Example

A white bread of 50 lb flour, 33 lb water, 1 lb salt and 0.6 lb yeast is 66% water, 2% salt and 1.2% yeast (33 ÷ 50 × 100 = 66). The percentages sum to 169.2% and the dough weighs 84.6 lb.

A French bread at 100% flour, 65% water, 2% salt and 1.25% yeast sums to 168.25%. For 150 lb of dough the flour is 150 ÷ 1.6825 = 89.153 lb, with 57.949 lb water, 1.783 lb salt and 1.114 lb yeast.

Assumptions and limitations

• Flour is all the flour in the formula, counted as one ingredient at 100%. Flour or water carried in a sourdough starter or preferment is not split out here; the starter can be entered under other ingredients, and the dough hydration calculator counts its flour and water.
• Hydration is the water percentage only. Milk, eggs and other liquids in the other-ingredients line are not counted as water.
• Weights are not rounded. King Arthur Baking's worked example multiplies its conversion factor by the whole-number percentages: the unrounded factor 0.8915 × 100 gives 89.15 lb of flour, the calculator's figure. King Arthur rounds the factor up to 0.9 so the batch is slightly larger than needed, which gives 90 lb of flour and 151.43 lb of dough.
• The percentages are the ones you enter; the calculator does not compare them with typical ranges for any style of bread and accepts any non-negative value.
• Worked figures are from King Arthur Baking, "Baker's Percentage" (Professional Bakers reference, kingarthurbaking.com, undated, retrieved October 2026).

Frequently asked questions