Guide
Baker's Percentage Chart: How to Calculate Baker's Percentage
Flour is 100%. Everything else is a percentage of that flour. Salt, water, starter, oil — all of them. Grams follow from the percentages. Cups never enter the conversation.
A recipe in cups breaks when you change the flour or the batch. A formula in baker's percentages scales clean. Double the flour, double everything that hangs off it. The ratios stay put.
The only rule
Pick the flour weight. Call it 100%. Divide every other ingredient by that flour weight. Multiply by 100.
Water at 375 g on flour at 500 g is 75% hydration. Salt at 11 g on the same flour is 2.2%. Starter at 100 g is 20%. The chart is just that division, repeated.
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 500 g | 100% |
| Water | 375 g | 75% |
| Salt | 11 g | 2.2% |
| Starter | 100 g | 20% |
That table is bowl flour only. It is not done. The starter is flour and water too.
True hydration is the number that ferments
A 100% hydration starter is half flour, half water. A 100 g starter carries 50 g flour and 50 g water.
Add those to the bowl. Total flour is 550 g. Total water is 425 g. True hydration is 425 ÷ 550, which is 77.3%. The bowl said 75%. The dough is wetter than the bowl said.
The sourdough engine folds starter flour and starter water into the percentage. That is true hydration. Bowl water over bowl flour is the other number. Use one and name it. Mixing them is how a “75% loaf” bakes like an 80% loaf.
A 75% loaf, worked so the percentage is true
Target: 75% true hydration. Bowl flour: 500 g. Starter: 100 g at 100% hydration. Salt: 2% of total flour.
Starter contributes 50 g flour and 50 g water. Total flour is 550 g. Water at 75% of 550 g is 412.5 g. The starter already supplied 50 g of that. Bowl water is 362.5 g.
Salt at 2% of 550 g is 11 g. Starter is 100 ÷ 500, or 20% of bowl flour. Inoculation on this site is starter weight over bowl flour. Same 20%.
Bowl water over bowl flour is 362.5 ÷ 500, or 72.5%. That is baker's hydration. True hydration is still 75%. Both numbers are right. They are not the same number.
Scale it. Want 1,000 g bowl flour? Double every weight. Percentages do not move.
A pizza dough, same arithmetic
Flour is still 100%. A home-steel dough at 70% hydration, on 400 g flour:
Water is 70% of 400 g, which is 280 g. Salt at 2.5% is 10 g. Oil at 2% is 8 g. Instant yeast at 0.30% is 1.2 g for an 8-hour room ferment. The same flour at 0.10% yeast is 0.4 g for a 24-hour cold ferment. The pizza engine doses yeast from the schedule. Those two rates are the anchors.
No starter in that mix, so bowl hydration and true hydration match. Add a 100% hydration levain and you are back to the loaf problem. Subtract the starter's flour and water from the bowl, or the headline 70% is a lie.
A 60% sheet-pan dough on the same 400 g flour is 240 g water. An 80% dough is 320 g water. Same flour. Same salt percentage. Different water. That is the whole chart.
What to stop doing
Stop converting a cup recipe one ingredient at a time and hoping. Weigh the flour. Set the percentages. Let the grams fall out.
Stop calling bowl hydration the dough's hydration once a starter is in the bowl. The water in the jar counts. So does the flour.