Baker’s Percentage Calculator for dough hydration, salt and preferment
Calculate baker’s percentages into exact weights
Baker’s percentage calculator: a quick, practical guide
The goal is clarity. In this baker’s percentage calculator for dough hydration, salt and preferment you provide the flour weight once. Every other ingredient is a percentage of that flour. When you change units, the output switches to the system you prefer—grams and kilograms for metric, ounces and pounds for imperial—so you can weigh directly without head math.
Step 1 — Choose units and flour. Pick metric or imperial, then enter flour weight. This is the 100% reference. If you only know total dough weight, a simple back-of-the-envelope is to divide by 1.6 to guess flour for 60–65% hydration with 2% salt. You can refine from there.
Step 2 — Set key percentages. Hydration drives crumb and handling; 60–70% suits many breads. Salt at 2% is common. Yeast depends on time and temperature; 0.2–0.6% is typical for instant yeast. Oil and sugar are optional enrichments—use them for sandwich loaves, buns or enriched doughs.
Step 3 — Add an optional preferment. If you use a poolish, biga or levain, turn preferment on. Enter the fraction of flour carried in the preferment and its hydration. The calculator splits flour and water accordingly and shows both the preferment portion and the remaining mix.
The results list includes each ingredient by weight plus a neat table with the baker’s percentages and the final total dough weight. Values round to cooking-friendly numbers while staying precise enough to reproduce the dough later.
How baker’s percentages work, explained simply
Flour equals 100%. Everything else is a fraction of that. With 500 g flour and 65% hydration, water is 325 g. Two percent salt adds 10 g. Percentages multiply directly by the flour weight; this makes scaling effortless—double the flour and every other ingredient doubles automatically.
Preferments are made from the same flour and water you were already planning to use. If 30% of flour is prefermented at 100% hydration, then 150 g flour and 150 g water move into the preferment, and the remaining mix uses the rest (350 g flour and 175 g water in this example). Salt and yeast typically stay outside unless your own method says otherwise.
The calculator never converts volume to weight, because densities vary by ingredient. Staying inside weight units keeps results honest and consistent across kitchens.
Common questions about baker’s percentages
My dough feels too wet—what should I change?
Reduce hydration by a few percent or hold back some water during mixing. High-protein flours can absorb more water; whole grains also bind more.
Can I enter sourdough instead of yeast?
Yes—treat your sourdough as a preferment. Estimate how much flour and water it contributes and set those values under Preferment.
Why do ounces sometimes show decimals?
Small weights in ounces benefit from a decimal place. When the number grows past 16 oz, the total is also shown in pounds.