How Baker's Percentages Work
How bakers write recipes as percentages of the flour weight, how to read a formula, and how to use it to scale any dough in seconds.
Flour Is Always 100%
Normally, the parts of a whole add up to 100%. Bakers do it differently: the total flour weight is always 100%, and every other ingredient is written as a percentage of the flour.
For example, a dough with 500 g flour, 350 g water, 10 g salt, and 5 g yeast is written as: flour 100%, water 70%, salt 2%, yeast 1%.
Those add up to 173%. That looks odd at first, but it's normal in baker's math. The total just tells you how much dough you get for each 100 g of flour.
Why Bakers Work This Way
Writing recipes as percentages has a few big advantages:
- You can scale to any batch size by changing one number: the flour.
- You can compare recipes at a glance. 65% water is a soft sandwich dough; 80% is a wet, open-crumbed loaf.
- You can spot mistakes. A bread with 5% salt is almost certainly a typo, since most bread uses about 2%.
- You can change one thing on purpose, like raising the water from 70% to 75%, without disturbing the rest of the recipe.
Typical Percentages in Bread
These ranges cover most everyday breads and are a useful sense-check for any formula you find:
- Water (hydration): 60-65% for sandwich loaves and bagels at the low end; 70-80% for rustic and sourdough loaves; 80% and up for ciabatta and focaccia.
- Salt: about 1.8-2.2%.
- Instant yeast: about 0.5-1.5% for a same-day dough, and 0.1-0.5% for long, cold rises.
- Sourdough starter: often 10-25%.
- Sugar and fat: 0-5% in lean breads; 10-20% or more in soft, enriched doughs like brioche.
Scaling to a Batch Size
Say you want 2,500 g of the dough above (total 173%). Divide the dough weight you want by the total percentage written as a decimal, and you have the flour:
- Flour: 2,500 ÷ 1.73 = 1,445 g
- Water: 1,445 × 0.70 = 1,012 g
- Salt: 1,445 × 0.02 = 29 g
- Yeast: 1,445 × 0.01 = 14 g
Common Questions When Reading a Formula
If a recipe uses more than one flour, such as 400 g bread flour and 100 g whole wheat, add them together. The total (500 g) is 100%, and each flour can be listed as its share: 80% and 20%.
Sourdough starter contains flour and water. In everyday formulas it's listed as one ingredient (say 20%). Some bakers also calculate the "overall" hydration, which counts the starter's flour and water too. Our Bread Recipe Calculator shows both.
Eggs, milk, and butter all contain water. A brioche with 50% eggs and 10% milk can feel quite wet even with little added water, because eggs are about three-quarters water.
Common questions
Why do baker's percentages add up to more than 100%?
Because each ingredient is compared with the flour, not with the whole dough. The flour alone is 100%, so everything else adds on top.
Do I need to use grams?
Any weight unit works, as long as every ingredient uses the same one. Grams are simplest because there are no fractions.