Baker's percentage & recipe scaling calculator

Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a share of the flour, not of the whole dough. Flour is always 100%, and everything else is measured against it: 350 g of water on 500 g of flour is 70%, 10 g of salt is 2%. If a recipe uses more than one flour (say bread flour plus whole wheat), the flours together make up the 100% basis, which is exactly how this calculator treats rows you mark as flour.

The payoff is that a formula written in percentages is size-independent. “70% water, 2% salt, 20% levain” describes one loaf or forty, and it lets you compare two recipes at a glance, something gram amounts can't do.

Hydration, total liquid divided by total flour, is the single number that says the most about how a dough will feel and bake. At 65% you get a firm, easy-to-shape sandwich dough; at 75–80% you're in open-crumb ciabatta and rustic sourdough territory, with a stickier dough that demands gentler handling.

Because hydration is a ratio, it stays honest when the recipe changes size or composition. Swap in a thirstier whole-grain flour and the same hydration number will feel drier in the hand, which is why bakers reason in hydration first and adjust grams second. This calculator counts every row you mark as water toward hydration, so milk or other liquids can be included where it makes sense.

Scaling a formula is multiplication, but the details bite. Round 500 g of flour to the nearest gram and nobody notices; round 7 g of salt or yeast the same way after a ×1.5 scale and you've shifted the seasoning or the fermentation noticeably. That's why the scale mode here rounds big amounts to whole grams but keeps one decimal on small rows: precision where it actually matters.

Scaling to a target dough weight or a loaf count beats guessing with a factor: decide what you want to end up with (say two 900 g loaves), and let the math walk backwards to each ingredient. One thing scaling can't do is fix time. Bulk fermentation and bake times don't scale linearly, so watch the dough, not the clock, on your first bigger batch.