Baking Ratio Calculator

Baker's Percentages Basics

Baker's percentages express every ingredient as a ratio relative to flour weight, with flour always at 100%. A recipe with 500g flour and 325g water has 65% hydration. If you double the flour to 1000g, the water doubles to 650g—the percentage stays the same regardless of batch size.

Professional bakers work this way because a formula like "100:65:2:2" reads the same whether you're making one loaf or fifty, and scales without any math beyond multiplication.

To find a percentage, divide ingredient weight by flour weight and multiply by 100. Going the other direction, multiply flour weight by the percentage (as a decimal) to get ingredient weight. A kitchen scale makes all of this much more reliable than measuring cups.

Quick Reference: Common Ratios

How to Use This Calculator

Pick a mode from the tabs above. Ratio to Weights converts baker's percentages to actual gram amounts—select a preset or enter custom ratios, type in your flour weight, and hit calculate.

Got an old recipe written in weights? Use Weights to Ratio to convert it to baker's percentages. Good for standardizing family recipes or figuring out what ratios a cookbook author was using.

The Hydration Calculator works in two modes. Simple mode just divides water by flour. Complex mode factors in that eggs are 75% water, milk is 87% water, butter is 15% water—useful when you're working with enriched doughs.

For scaling, enter your original recipe, then choose whether to scale by flour weight, by a multiplier, or by total dough yield. Batch Planner does the reverse: given how much flour you have and how big you want each loaf, it calculates how many you can make.

Compare Ratios puts two formulas side by side so you can spot the differences.

Dough Hydration

Divide water weight by flour weight, multiply by 100. The result is your hydration percentage—it predicts how the dough will handle and what texture you'll end up with.

Bagels and pretzels run around 50-57% hydration, stiff enough to shape easily and hold their form through boiling. Sandwich bread sits in the 58-65% range, which is where most home bakers feel comfortable. Once you push past 65%, the dough gets stickier and slacker. French bread and pizza run 66-72%. Ciabatta-style breads with big open holes need 73-80% or higher.

If you're just starting out, 65% is a good target. Above 80%, you're essentially working with thick batter—wet hands help, and folding works better than kneading.

Water Content in Common Ingredients

Classic Bread Ratios

The basic lean bread formula runs about 100:65:2:2 for flour, water, salt, and yeast. Flour gives you structure via gluten; water activates it and feeds the yeast; salt tightens the gluten and slows fermentation while adding flavor; yeast does the rising.

Variations build from there. Bump water to 68% and reduce yeast slightly for French bread—longer fermentation develops more flavor. For pizza, add 3% olive oil to help the dough stretch. Focaccia takes that further with 80% hydration and more oil, which is why it's so soft inside.

Sourdough swaps out the commercial yeast for about 20% starter. Since a 100% hydration starter is half flour and half water, you're adding liquid and structure at the same time.

Enriched breads go in the opposite direction. Brioche has 50% butter and 40% eggs—at that point it handles differently from lean dough and bakes more like cake.

Pasta Dough Ratios

Traditional egg pasta runs about 100:50—100g flour to 50g eggs, which works out to roughly one large egg per 100g. The eggs give the pasta its color and rich texture.

For eggless pasta, use water at about 45% of flour weight. Drier dough works better for shapes that need to hold up during drying or in sauce. If the dough cracks or crumbles, it needs more liquid. If it sticks to everything, add flour or give it more rest time—hydration evens out as the dough sits.

Pastry Ratios and the 3-2-1 Rule

Classic pie crust is 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part water by weight. All that fat coats the flour proteins, limiting gluten development and keeping the crust tender. Cold butter matters because it melts during baking and creates flaky layers.

French pastries tweak the ratios. Pâte brisée (50% butter, 25% water) makes firm tart shells. Pâte sucrée adds sugar and eggs for sweeter applications. Puff pastry goes to equal weights of butter and flour, built up in dozens of laminated layers.

Choux is different from all of these. The ratio is 1:1:1:2 (butter, water, flour, eggs), and you cook the flour and liquid together on the stovetop before beating in the eggs. When it bakes, steam puffs the dough up into hollow shells.

Scaling Recipes

With baker's percentages, scaling is just multiplication. Double the flour, double everything else. The ratios stay constant.

Watch out for edge cases. Small batches under 200g flour magnify measurement errors, so you might need slightly more yeast to compensate. Large batches have more thermal mass and may ferment faster than expected. Salt should stay in the 1.8-2.2% range regardless of size—it's not something to scale proportionally outside that window.

Eggs are awkward because you can't use half of one. Round to the nearest whole egg and adjust liquid slightly if needed.

Troubleshooting with Ratios

If your dough is too wet, check your hydration calculation. You may have mismeasured flour or water, or you're targeting the wrong range for that bread type.

Dense crumb with decent fermentation often means hydration is too low. Try bumping it up 5%—more water gives gluten room to expand during oven spring. Bland bread is almost always a salt problem. Check that you're actually hitting 1.8-2% of flour weight.

The nice thing about working in percentages is you can line your recipe up against a known formula and see exactly where they differ.

The Role of Each Ingredient

• Flour provides structure via gluten. Bread flour (12-14% protein) handles wetter doughs; pastry flour (8-10% protein) keeps things tender.
• Without water, gluten can't form and yeast can't work. Temperature matters—colder water slows fermentation, warmer water speeds it up.
• Salt at 1.8-2.2% tightens gluten, moderates yeast activity, and makes bread actually taste like something.
• Yeast ferments sugars into CO2 (for rise) and alcohols (for flavor). More yeast means faster rise but less complexity.
• Fats like butter coat gluten strands, making crumb tender. Butter is about 15% water.
• Sugar feeds yeast, helps browning, and competes with gluten for water (tenderizing).
• Eggs are 75% water but also add fat, structure, and color. They change how dough handles.

Frequently Asked Questions