Baker's Percentage Calculator

In short Baker's percentage measures every ingredient against the TOTAL FLOUR weight, not against the finished dough. Flour is always 100%, water might be 70%, salt 2%, yeast 1% — and the percentages therefore add up to well past 100, which looks wrong the first time you see it and is not. That single choice is what makes bread recipes portable: because every quantity is a proportion of flour, doubling the flour doubles every weight and changes not one percentage, so the same formula works for one loaf or forty. It also makes recipes comparable at a glance, since a baker reading 75% knows the dough will be slack and 60% knows it will be stiff, regardless of batch size. The identity underneath is worth knowing because you can check any recipe with it: the total dough weight divided by the flour weight always equals the sum of the percentages divided by 100. The flour cancels out, so that holds at any scale. Two conventions to be aware of. When a recipe uses more than one flour, the percentages are against their combined weight. And if there is a levain or poolish, its flour counts toward that total, which is where the published hydration figure and the water you actually pour stop agreeing.