Baker's Percentage Calculator

Express a bread formula as percentages of flour, or work back from a dough weight.

Please note: Cooking guides only. Times and temperatures vary with oven calibration, altitude, starting temperature and cut. For anything where safety matters — poultry, pork, sous vide, preserving — use a probe thermometer and follow your national food safety guidance rather than a calculated time.

What the Baker's Percentage Calculator does

Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a proportion of the flour, which is fixed at 100%. Because the ratios stay constant at any batch size, a formula written this way scales from one loaf to a thousand without recalculation.

Formula

Ingredient % = Ingredient weight ÷ Flour weight × 100
Total % = 100 + sum of every other percentage
Flour = Target dough × 100 ÷ Total %
Hydration = Water % of flour

Inputs explained

Input	Unit	Required	Notes
Calculate	one of 2 options	Yes	—
Flour weight	number	In some modes	Accepts more than 0. Shown Calculate is Percentages from ingredient weights.
Other ingredient names	text	Yes	Separate values with commas, spaces or new lines.
Weights	text	In some modes	One per ingredient, in the same unit as the flour. Shown Calculate is Percentages from ingredient weights.
Percentages of flour	text	In some modes	One per ingredient. Flour is always 100%. Shown Calculate is Weights from percentages and a dough target.
Target total dough weight	number	In some modes	Accepts more than 0. Shown Calculate is Weights from percentages and a dough target.
Unit	one of 4 options	Optional	—

How to use it

Choose Calculate and Unit.
Enter Other ingredient names.
Fill in the remaining inputs the form shows for your choice.
Select Calculate.

Worked example

A formula with 1,000 g flour, 700 g water, 20 g salt and 10 g yeast.

Flour: 1000 g
Water: 700 g
Salt: 20 g
Yeast: 10 g

Water is 70%, salt 2% and yeast 1%. The total is 173%, so the dough weighs 1,730 g.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the total exceed 100%?

Because flour is the reference at 100% rather than the whole. Everything else is expressed relative to it, so the total is always more than 100.

How do I hit an exact dough weight?

Divide the target by the total percentage and multiply by 100. For 1,730 g of dough at 173%, you need exactly 1,000 g of flour.

Method and sources

Method. Every ingredient expressed as a percentage of flour weight, the standard convention in bread formulation, and converted back to weights for a target batch.

Assumptions

Flour is 100% by definition; where several flours are used their combined weight is the base.

Limitations

Percentages describe a formula, not its behaviour. The same hydration handles very differently between flours depending on protein content and milling.
Preferment and starter contributions carry their own flour and water, which must be counted in the totals or the true hydration is misstated.

Sources

None — a formulation convention, not a food-safety figure — Not applicable. Stated so the missing citation is understood as deliberate rather than outstanding.