1. Dry & Starter
2. Liquids & Add-ins
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
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Tools to Also Try
Mastering the Science of Bread: The Ultimate Guide to Dough Hydration and Baker’s Percentages
In the world of artisan baking the difference between a dense, dry loaf and a professional grade, airy sourdough often comes down to a single mathematical figure: hydration.
While amateur bakers follow recipes by volume (cups and spoons), master bakers use ratios and percentages.
Our Dough Hydration Calculator is designed to bridge that gap, providing you with the same precision used in professional bakeries to ensure every loaf you bake is a masterpiece.
What is Dough Hydration?
Dough hydration is the ratio of liquid to flour in a bread recipe, expressed as a percentage. In the Baker’s Percentage system, flour is always considered 100%. Every other ingredient—water, salt, yeast and fat is calculated as a percentage of that total flour weight.
For example if you have 1,000 grams of flour and 700 grams of water, your dough has a 70% hydration level.
This simple number dictates the entire personality of your bread from how the dough feels in your hands to the final texture of the crumb.
Why Hydration Accuracy Matters
If you have ever wondered why your bread feels too sticky to handle or conversely why it turns out tough and crumbly the answer is likely hidden in your hydration math. Small deviations in water weight can drastically alter the final product.
Low Hydration (50% – 60%): This creates a stiff, easy to mold dough. It is the standard for bagels, pretzels and certain types of sandwich bread. These loaves have a tight, uniform crumb and a sturdy crust.
Medium Hydration (65% – 70%): The sweet spot for most home bakers. This level produces a versatile dough that is manageable but yields a softer more flexible crumb. It is ideal for standard boules and pizza dough.
High Hydration (75% – 85%+): This is the realm of artisan sourdough, ciabatta and focaccia. High hydration dough is slack and sticky requiring advanced folding techniques rather than traditional kneading. The reward is a glossy, open wild crumb and a thin, crispy crust.
The Ultra Advantage: Calculating True Hydration
Most basic calculators on the web only look at water and flour. However professional baking is more complex. Many ingredients we think of as solids or fats actually contribute significant amounts of water to the dough.
Our professional-grade tool goes beyond the basics by calculating the True Hydration of your recipe. If you add milk you aren't just adding fat; you are adding a liquid that is approximately 87% water. An egg is roughly 74% water. Even honey contains about 17% moisture.
If you ignore these values your 70% hydration recipe might actually be closer to 76%, leading to a dough that is much stickier than you anticipated. Our calculator automatically adjusts for these variables ensuring your math is scientifically accurate.
Sourdough Hydration: The Starter Factor
Sourdough baking adds another layer of complexity. Your starter or levain is a mixture of flour and water. To get an accurate reading of your final loaf, you must account for the flour and water hidden inside that starter.
If you add 100g of a 100% hydration starter to your dough you are effectively adding 50g of flour and 50g of water. Our tool handles this breakdown for you instantly.
By inputting your starter weight and its hydration level the calculator re-allocates those amounts into the total dry and wet weights giving you a "Total Formula Hydration" that reflects the reality of the dough.
How to Use the Target Mode for Recipe Building
Standard calculators require you to guess how much water you need, check the result, and then adjust. Our tool features a Target Mode (Recipe Builder), which reverses the process.
If you know you want to bake a 78% hydration sourdough using 500g of flour you simply set your target.
The tool will calculate exactly how much water you need to pour into the bowl, accounting for the moisture already present in your starter and other liquid add-ins.
This eliminates the guess and check method and allows you to build custom recipes from scratch with total confidence.
Understanding Baker’s Percentages
The table generated by our tool provides the Baker’s Percentage for every ingredient. This is the universal language of bakers. It allows you to:
Compare Recipes: You can instantly see if a recipe is saltier or wetter than another, regardless of the loaf size.
Ensure Consistency: Professional bakers use these percentages to ensure every batch of bread tastes exactly the same.
Identify Errors: If your salt percentage is 4% instead of the standard 2% you know immediately that your bread will be too salty before you even start mixing.
The Power of Recipe Scaling
One of the biggest hurdles for home bakers is adjusting a recipe for different quantities. Perhaps a recipe is written for two loaves, but you only want to bake one. Or maybe you need to bake ten loaves for a party.
Our Recipe Scaler allows you to take any hydration profile and instantly resize it. By entering your desired Total Dough Weight the tool mathematically recalculates every single ingredient down to the gram while keeping the hydration and salt ratios identical.
This ensures that whether you are baking a 500g small boule or a 2kg giant miche, the texture and flavor remain perfect.
Tips for Handling High Hydration Dough
If you are using our calculator to push your limits into the 80%+ hydration range, remember that technique is just as important as the math:
Autolyse: Let your flour and water sit for 30–60 minutes before adding salt and starter. This starts the gluten development naturally.
Wet Hands: When working with high-hydration dough, keep your hands slightly damp to prevent sticking, rather than adding more flour.
Stretch and Fold: Instead of traditional kneading, use stretch and fold maneuvers every 30 minutes during bulk fermentation to build strength in the slack dough.
Temperature Control: High hydration dough ferments faster. Keep an eye on your room temperature to avoid over-proofing.
Summary: Why Precision is the Secret Ingredient
Baking is a unique blend of art and chemistry. While the "feel" of the dough is something you develop over years of practice the chemistry is something you can master today with the right tools. By using our Dough Hydration Calculator you are removing the variables that lead to baking fails and replacing them with the precision of a professional boulangerie.
Whether you are calculating the water-to-flour ratio for a simple white loaf, or building a complex multi-grain sourdough with honey and eggs, this tool provides the accuracy you need. Stop guessing, start calculating and watch your bread reach new heights.
