Baker's Percentage Calculator
Use our baker’s percentage calculator to calculate baker’s percentages for bread and sourdough recipes. Includes what baker’s percentage is, the baker’s percentages formula, and how to compute baker’s percentage step by step (with examples).
What Is Baker’s Percentage?
Baker’s percentage (also called baker’s math) is a way to express ingredient amounts as a percentage of the total flour weight in a recipe.
In baker’s percentages, total flour is always 100%. Every other ingredient (water, salt, yeast, starter, oil, sugar, etc.) is calculated relative to flour weight.
This makes it easy to scale recipes up or down and compare dough hydration and salt levels across different bread and sourdough formulas.
Baker’s Percentages Formula
Baker’s percentage is calculated by dividing each ingredient weight by total flour weight, then multiplying by 100.
Total flour includes all flour in the formula (including flour in levain/starter if you’re counting full formula flour).
Hydration is the most common baker’s percentage people track.
Percentages are relative to 500g flour.
How to Calculate Baker’s Percentage
- 1
Add up total flour weight (this is your 100% reference).
- 2
For each ingredient, divide the ingredient weight by total flour weight.
- 3
Multiply by 100 to get baker’s percentage.
- 4
To scale a recipe, choose a flour weight and multiply it by each percentage (as a decimal) to get new ingredient weights.
Frequently Asked Questions
Baker’s percentage expresses each ingredient as a percent of total flour weight. Total flour is 100%, and everything else is calculated relative to flour.
Use Ingredient % = (ingredient weight ÷ total flour weight) × 100.
Calculate each ingredient relative to total flour. For sourdough, be consistent about whether you include the starter/levain flour and water in the totals when computing hydration and percentages.
Ingredient % = (ingredient weight ÷ total flour weight) × 100. Hydration % = (total water ÷ total flour) × 100.
Yes—many people build one with the same formula (ingredient ÷ flour). This calculator does the same math without needing a spreadsheet.
It’s a tool that converts ingredient weights into baker’s percentages (and often helps scale the recipe by selecting a new flour weight).