Baking Calculator

Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a percentage of the total flour weight, with flour itself always pegged at 100%. A formula reading flour 100%, water 68%, salt 2%, yeast 1% tells you that for every 1000 g of flour you use 680 g of water, 20 g of salt, and 10 g of yeast. The percentages don't add up to 100 — they're each measured against flour, which is what makes the system so portable.

The payoff is scaling without re-deriving a recipe. Because the ratios are fixed to flour, you can build a batch around any flour weight, or work backwards from a target dough weight. Want exactly 1 kg of finished dough? Sum the percentages (here 171%), divide your target by that total to find the flour, then apply each percentage. Professional bakeries run entire production schedules this way, and it's why a formula scribbled on an index card survives being multiplied by twenty.

Salt and yeast are where percentages earn their keep. Salt almost always lands between 1.8% and 2.2% of flour — too little and the loaf tastes flat, too much and it slows fermentation. Commercial yeast sits around 1% for instant. Keeping these as percentages means they stay correctly proportioned no matter how much bread you're making. Edit any percentage in the table and every weight re-derives instantly.

When a recipe uses a preferment — a poolish, biga, or sourdough starter — the flour and water locked up in it still count toward your totals. Serious formulas track the preferment's flour as part of the 100% so the overall hydration stays honest. For everyday baking you can keep it simpler, but it's worth knowing that the percentages describe the whole dough, not just what you add at final mix.