Baker’s Percentages: The Complete Guide To Baker’s Math
Baker’s percentages are how professional bakers write recipes so that every ingredient is expressed as a ratio of the flour weight. Flour is always 100%. Water, salt, starter, butter, and everything else is a percentage of that flour number. Once you understand it, you can scale any recipe in seconds, diagnose a sticky dough before you’ve even touched it, and read a formula you’ve never seen before and know exactly how it’s going to behave.
Over the past 5 years, I’ve mastered this system since starting sourdough baking, using it to develop 70+ sourdough recipes, create 15 delicious sourdough discard recipes, and write a sourdough cookbook! This guide covers everything I’ve learned: the formula, how to use it, how to scale, how to troubleshoot, and a free calculator!
Jump To: Calculator | Scaling Recipes | Troubleshooting
Quick Answer:
Baker's percentages express every ingredient as a percentage of total flour weight.
Flour = 100%
All other ingredients scale from that number
Key rules:
- Percentages describe ratios, not portions of the total recipe
- Totals will exceed 100% (this is correct)
Formula:
Baker’s % = (ingredient weight ÷ total flour weight) × 100
Example:
- 1000g flour → 100%
- 700g water → 700 ÷ 1000 × 100 = 70%
- 20g salt → 20 ÷ 1000 × 100 = 2%
This tells you immediately:
- 70% hydration → moderately soft, workable dough
- 2% salt → ideal flavor range
Jump to:
- Quick Answer:
- What Are Baker's Percentages?
- The Difference From Regular Percentages
- Why Baker’s Percentages Changed the Way I Bake
- Calculating Baker's Percentages (Step By Step)
- Baker’s Percentage Calculator
- How To Scale Any Recipe Using Baker’s Percentages
- Baker's Percentages and Sourdough Starter
- Add-Ins And Inclusions
- Baker’s Percentage Quick Reference: Typical Ranges by Ingredient
- Reverse Baker’s Percentages: Starting From Total Dough Weight
- Troubleshooting Your Bread Recipe Using Baker’s Percentages
- Common Mistakes in Baker’s Math (And How to Avoid Them)
- Frequently Asked Questions About Baker’s Percentages
- Working with Complex Recipes
- Adapting Your Recipes
What Are Baker's Percentages?
Baker’s percentages are the universal language of bread baking. Once you understand the system, you can read any formula, from a simple white sandwich loaf to a complex laminated dough, and immediately understand how it’s going to behave.
Here’s another way to think about it: each percentage as a “per 100 grams of flour” ratio:
- 70% water = 70g water per 100g flour
- 2% salt = 2g salt per 100g flour
The percentages don’t describe portions of the recipe, they describe ratios to the flour.
The system works in any unit; grams, kilograms, pounds. The percentages stay the same regardless of batch size. That’s the power of baker’s math!
Let’s break down my same day sourdough bread recipe. As written, this recipe requires 500 grams flour, 330 grams water, 150 grams starter, and 10 grams salt.
| Ingredient | Weight | Percentage (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 500g | 100% |
| Water | 330g | 66% |
| Starter | 150g | 30% |
| Salt | 10g | 2% |
| TOTAL | 198% |
That 198% total is correct. It tells you: for every 100g of flour, you’re using 66g of water, 2g of salt, and 30g of starter. Scale the flour to 1000g and every other number scales with it, perfectly, automatically.
If you’re still getting familiar with terms like hydration or bulk fermentation, check out my sourdough hydration guide and sourdough glossary to build a strong foundation.
The Difference From Regular Percentages
Regular percentages:
– Based on total recipe weight
– Always add up to 100%
Baker's percentages:
– Based on flour weight
– Always exceed 100%
Once you understand this difference, the formula becomes much easier to work with.
Why Baker’s Percentages Changed the Way I Bake
Scaling becomes trivial. Before I understood baker’s math, doubling a recipe meant individually multiplying every ingredient in my head as I’d go, and I’d inevitably mess up the salt or forget to adjust the starter. Now I just decide how much flour I want to use and multiply everything by that number. My Whole Wheat Sourdough scales from a single 500g loaf to a four-loaf 2kg batch in about 30 seconds.
You can predict your dough before you mix it. The hydration percentage, or the ratio of water to flour, tells you almost everything about how a dough will handle. A 65% hydration dough is firm, easy to shape, forgiving. An 80% hydration dough is slack, sticky, and demands good technique. When I look at a new recipe, I check the hydration first. That one number tells me whether I’ll be struggling or sailing.
Recipe comparison gets honest. Two recipes that look totally different in grams might be nearly identical in percentages, or vice versa. Last year I was comparing three different sourdough pizza recipes and used the information from the baker’s percentages and the baked results in the development of my sourdough pizza dough.
Troubleshooting becomes diagnostic instead of guesswork. When a bake goes wrong, baker’s percentages give you a starting point. Too salty? Check your salt percentage, it should be between 1.8% and 2.2%. Dough won’t hold its shape? Your hydration might be high for the flour you’re using. Fermentation too fast? Your starter percentage is probably above 25% in a warm kitchen. The numbers tell you where to start looking.
It’s how the professionals communicate. If you ever want to follow a recipe from a serious bread book, take an online course, or discuss your formula with another baker, you need to speak this language. Baker’s percentages are universal, they work in any unit, at any scale, in any language.
Calculating Baker's Percentages (Step By Step)
Baker’s % = (Ingredient Weight ÷ Total Flour Weight) × 100
Here’s how to apply the formula step by step:
Step 1: Identify Your Total Flour Weight
Add up all the flour in the recipe. If you’re using only one type of flour, that’s your total. If you’re using a blend, say, 60% bread flour and 40% whole wheat, add both together. The combined total is your 100%.
Example: 300g bread flour + 200g whole wheat flour = 500g total flour = 100%
Step 2: Divide Each Ingredient by the Total Flour Weight
Take every other ingredient in the recipe and divide its weight by the total flour weight.
Example: 350g water ÷ 500g flour = 0.70
Step 3: Multiply by 100 to Get the Percentage
Convert the decimal to a percentage by multiplying by 100.
Example: 0.70 × 100 = 70% (water percentage / hydration)
Baker’s Percentage Examples:
Let’s convert a full recipe. Here’s my Sourdough Pizza Dough:
| Ingredient | Weight | Math | Baker’s % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bread Flour | 600g | 600 ÷ 600 × 100 | 100% |
| Water | 375g | 375 ÷ 600 × 100 | 62.50% |
| Sourdough Starter | 90g | 90 ÷ 600 × 100 | 15% |
| Olive Oil | 12g | 12 ÷ 600 × 100 | 2% |
| Salt | 12g | 12 ÷ 600 × 100 | 2% |
| TOTAL | 181.5% |
Notice the total: 181.5%?
The pizza dough is a relatively low hydration (62.5%, easy to stretch and handle), with a modest starter percentage (15%, slower fermentation, which I wanted for flavor development), and a standard salt level (2% right in the sweet spot).
I can read all of that just from the numbers!
Now, let’s take a look at my Whole Wheat Sourdough Recipe. This one is a bit more complex because it has 2 types of flour. Remember to add both together and their total weight = 100%.
| Ingredient | Weight | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Bread Flour | 250g | – |
| Whole Wheat Flour | 250g | – |
| Total Flour | 500g | 100% |
| Water | 340g | 68% |
| Sourdough Starter | 100g | 20% |
| Honey | 45g | 9% |
| Salt | 14g | 2.8% |
| TOTAL | 199.8% |
Baker’s Percentage Calculator
Prefer to skip the mental math? Use my baker’s percentage calculator below!
Just pop the weight of each ingredient into the calculator below and it'll do the rest.
Baker’s Percentage Calculator
How To Scale Any Recipe Using Baker’s Percentages
Once you understand baker’s math, resizing a recipe is almost embarrassingly simple.
The reverse formula:
Ingredient weight = flour weight × (baker’s % ÷ 100)
Start with how much flour you want to use. Multiply that by each ingredient’s percentage (as a decimal). Done.
Step 1: Determine Your Flour Weight
This is your only decision. Want two loaves instead of one? Double the flour. Fitting dough into a specific banneton size? Choose the flour weight that gives you the dough weight you need. Everything else follows automatically.
For example, let's say you want to use 900 grams of flour to make 2 loaves of same day sourdough as referenced above.
Step 2: Multiply By Percentage
Let’s scale my Same Day Sourdough (normally made with 500g flour) up to a two-loaf batch using 900g flour:
| Ingredient | Baker’s % | 900g Flour Calculation | New Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bread Flour | 100% | 900g × 1.00 | 900g |
| Water | 66% | 900g × 0.66 | 594g |
| Sourdough starter | 30% | 900g × 0.30 | 270g |
| Salt | 2% | 900g × 0.02 | 18g |
I scaled up by 80% and every single ingredient scaled with it. Salt didn’t get forgotten. Starter didn’t stay at the old amount. The ratios are preserved exactly.
Use The Baker’s Percentage Calculator Below To Scale Any Recipe Instantly.
Scaling Calculator
Scaling Options
A note on scaling and fermentation:
One thing that doesn’t scale linearly: your timeline. Doubling the dough weight in the same bowl will speed your bulk fermentation because the dough mass retains heat differently. It’s important to pay attention to the dough during bulk fermentation when scaling recipes. The percentages handle the ingredients perfectly, the timing is still up to you and your kitchen.
Baker's Percentages and Sourdough Starter
Sourdough starter is the one ingredient in baker’s math that gets complicated, because starter is itself a mixture of flour and water. How you account for it depends on what you’re trying to do.
If you’re still working on your starter, check out my quick sourdough starter recipe or troubleshooting tips if your starter isn’t rising properly.
The Simple Approach (What I Use For Every Day Baking)
Instead, we’re going to keep it simple and treat your starter as a single line item. Its total weight goes in as one percentage. For a 100g starter in a 500g flour recipe, that’s 20%.
This is what I do in all my recipes on this site. It’s clean, it scales correctly, and for most home baking purposes it’s completely sufficient. The starter percentage tells you what you actually need to know: how much leavening power you’re adding relative to the flour, which directly controls your fermentation speed.
Here's a step-by-step guide breaking down my same day sourdough bread recipe. As written, this recipe requires 500 grams flour, 330 grams water, 150 grams starter, and 10 grams salt.
| Ingredient | Percentage (%) |
|---|---|
| Flour | 100% |
| Water | 66% |
| Salt | 2% |
| Starter | 30% |
The Complete Approach (For Precise Recipe Development)
If you need to know your recipe’s actual overall hydration, for troubleshooting, comparison, or professional recipe development, you need to break your starter into its components.
A 100% hydration starter (equal parts flour and water by weight, which is the most common home baker’s starter) is exactly half flour and half water. So 150g of starter = 75g flour + 75g water.
Here’s how my Same Day Sourdough looks with the starter broken out:
| Ingredient | Weight (g) | True Baker’s % |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 500g | - |
| Starter Flour (from 150g starter at 100% hydration) | 75g | - |
| Total Flour | 575g | 100% |
| Water | 330g | – |
| Starter Water (from starter) | 75g | – |
| Total Water | 405g | 70.4% (true hydration) |
| Salt | 10g | 1.7% |
The simple approach shows 66% hydration and 30% starter. The complete approach shows 70.4% true hydration. Both are “correct”, they just answer different questions.
Use the simple approach for baking. Use the complete approach when you’re comparing your formula to another baker’s and you want an apples-to-apples hydration comparison.
What If My Starter Isn’t 100% Hydration?
If you maintain a stiffer starter (say, 60% or 80% hydration), or a more liquid one, the math changes slightly. The formula is:
Starter flour = starter weight ÷ (1 + starter hydration as decimal) Starter water = starter weight − starter flour
Example: 100g of a 75% hydration starter → 100 ÷ 1.75 = 57g flour, 43g water
For most home bakers, this level of precision isn’t necessary. But if you’re ever converting a recipe from a book that uses a stiff levain and you’re using a liquid starter, this is how you make it accurate.
Add-Ins And Inclusions
Add-ins like nuts, seeds, or dried fruit don't directly affect your base formula because the flour, water, salt, and starter ratios stay the same, but they need to be expressed as a percentage too, so they scale correctly every time.
Inclusions should be considered carefully in terms of weight and how they might impact the dough’s structure. Too many heavy add-ins, for instance, can make a high-hydration dough harder to handle.
When I’m working in baker’s percentages, I always include add ins as their own line item, this ensures that as I scale my recipe, the inclusions are scaled proportionately.
Recipes like my Chai Latte Sourdough or my Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Sourdough rely heavily on properly scaled inclusions.
Baker’s Percentage Quick Reference: Typical Ranges by Ingredient
This table is something I wish I’d had when I was learning. Bookmark it, print it, tape it inside a cupboard door, whatever works. The ranges here come from a combination of professional baking standards and what I’ve found actually works in a home kitchen, which aren’t always the same thing.
| Ingredient | Typical Baker’s % Range | What it affects | Notes from my kitchen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water (hydration) | 60-85% | Dough texture, crumb structure | Below 65% = firm and forgiving. Above 78% = challenging for home bakers. I stay at 68-74% for most sourdoughs. |
| Salt | 1.8-2.2% | Flavor, fermentation rate, gluten structure | Non-negotiable range. Below 1.5% and the bread tastes flat. Above 2.5% and fermentation slows. Always weigh salt, tablespoon measurements are wildly inconsistent. |
| Sourdough starter | 10-30% | Fermentation speed, sourness | Lower % = slower, tangier. Higher % = faster, milder. Adjust based on your kitchen temperature and schedule. |
| Commercial yeast (instant) | 0.5-2% | Rise time | Less for long cold ferments, more for quick same-day baking. |
| Butter / oil (enriched doughs) | 3-60% | Crumb softness, richness | 3-8% for a soft sandwich crumb; 50-60% for full brioche richness. Fat inhibits gluten, so high-fat doughs need adjusted mixing. |
| Sugar / honey | 2-20% | Flavor, browning, fermentation | Under 5% adds subtle sweetness without significantly affecting structure. Over 10% accelerates browning and speeds up fermentation. |
| Eggs | 10-50% | Richness, structure, color | Eggs add both liquid and fat; count them toward your total liquid when calculating true hydration. |
| Milk (instead of water) | 60-80% | Softness, color, flavor | Same hydration range as water. Milk fat and sugars add tenderness and help browning. |
| Seeds (poppy, sesame, etc.) | 5-15% | Texture, crust | Above 20% starts to weigh down the dough structure. |
| Nuts / dried fruit | 20-40% | Texture, flavor | Fold in during the last third of bulk fermentation, not at initial mix. Above 40% and you’re fighting the gluten network. |
| Fresh fruit (blueberries, etc.) | 25-40% | Moisture, flavor, color | Fresh fruit releases moisture during baking. Above 30%, consider reducing your water slightly. I use 35% blueberries in my Lemon Blueberry Sourdough. |
| Prefermented flour (levain/poolish) | 8-30% | Complexity, structure, flavor | Lower = milder, slower; higher = more complex, faster. |
| Cocoa powder | 5-15% | Flavor, structure | Cocoa absorbs liquid; if adding over 8%, increase hydration by a third or half of the cocoa percentage. |
A note on inclusions: The add-in percentages (fruit, nuts, seeds) don’t change your base formula. Your flour, water, salt, and starter percentages stay the same. The inclusions are simply added on top, but they need to be expressed as percentages so they scale proportionally when you resize the recipe. I learned this the hard way after making a tiny test batch of my Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Sourdough, falling in love with it, then trying to scale it up by feel and ending up with a dry dark chocolate layer!
Reverse Baker’s Percentages: Starting From Total Dough Weight
Most of the time, you start with a flour weight and calculate everything from there. But sometimes you need to work backwards, you know how much total dough you want, and you need to figure out how much flour to use.
This comes up when:
- You’re sizing dough to fit a specific pan or banneton
- You want to make a set number of rolls at a specific weight each
- You’re working from a recipe that lists dough weight instead of flour weight
The reverse formula:
Flour weight = desired dough weight ÷ (sum of all baker’s percentages ÷ 100)
For Example:
Let’s say I want exactly 900g of total dough using my Same Day Sourdough formula (100% flour + 66% water + 30% starter + 2% salt = 198% total).
Flour weight = 900 ÷ (198 ÷ 100) = 900 ÷ 1.98 = 454g flour
Then I scale everything from 454g:
- Water: 454g × 0.66 = 300g
- Starter: 454g × 0.30 = 136g
- Salt: 454g × 0.02 = 9g
- Total: 454 + 300 + 136 + 9 = 899g ✓ (rounding gets you to 900)
I find this quite useful when I’m using different sized or shaped bannetons!
Troubleshooting Your Bread Recipe Using Baker’s Percentages
When something goes wrong with a bake, my first instinct isn’t to blame the weather or the flour, it’s to look at my formula and audit the numbers. Nine times out of ten, the problem is in the percentages.
Here’s what I’ve learned to look for:
| Problem | Likely Baker’s Math Cause | Fix Using Baker’s Percentages |
|---|---|---|
| Dough is too sticky, won’t hold shape | Hydration too high for flour protein level | Reduce water by 2-5%. Or switch to bread flour (higher protein handles more water). |
| Dough tears when you stretch it | Hydration too low, or too much whole grain flour without enough water | Increase water by 3-5%. Hydration below 63% for sourdough is often too stiff for most home bakers. |
| Bread tastes flat or bland | Salt percentage too low | Check your salt is at 1.8-2.2% of flour weight. Even 0.5% too little salt is noticeable. |
| Bread is way too salty | Salt percentage too high, or volume-measured instead of weighed | Weigh your salt. 1 tablespoon of fine sea salt ≈ 17g; 1 tablespoon of kosher salt ≈ 12g. The difference matters at 2% salt. |
| Sourdough ferments too fast | Starter % too high, or kitchen is warm, batch scaled up and baker’s timeline not adjusted | Drop starter % in warm weather. Fermentation speed scales directly with starter percentage. Try shortening the bulk ferment and cold proofing your loaves |
| Sourdough takes forever to rise | Starter % too low, or kitchen is cold | Increase starter percentage. Below 18°C (65°F), I add an extra 5% starter to my usual amount. |
| Dense crumb with no open holes | Hydration too low, under-fermentation, or low starter % | Increase hydration by 5% and verify starter is at 20-25%. Consider using autolyse to develop gluten before adding starter. |
| Recipe doesn’t taste consistent batch to batch | Using volume measures instead of weight | Convert everything to grams. 1 cup of flour varies from 120g to 150g depending on how it was scooped. Baker’s percentages can’t save you from inconsistent measuring. |
The number I check first every time
Before I look at anything else, I check salt. It’s the most common off-the-cuff mistake in home baking (especially for people who measure by feel), it’s easy to verify in the formula, and the fix is simple. If your salt is right and your hydration is right, you’ve eliminated most of the common failure modes.
Common Mistakes in Baker’s Math (And How to Avoid Them)
Mistake 1: Thinking All Percentages Should Add Up to 100%
They don’t. They won’t. They shouldn’t. If your formula totals exactly 100%, you’ve made an error, either you’ve left out ingredients, or you’ve accidentally used regular percentage math instead of baker’s math. A complete bread formula always totals above 100%.
Mistake 2: Using Volume Measurements Instead of Weight
Baker’s percentages only work when every ingredient is measured by weight. A cup of all-purpose flour can weigh anywhere from 120g to 150g depending on how it was scooped. A cup of bread flour is different from a cup of whole wheat. I made this mistake for a lot of my baking career, my formula was technically correct, but I was feeding it inconsistent ingredient weights every single time. The fix is a digital kitchen scale. This is the single most important piece of equipment in my kitchen, and it costs less than a bag of flour.
Mistake 3: Calculating Multi-Flour Recipes Against Only One Flour Type
If your recipe uses 300g bread flour and 200g whole wheat, your total flour is 500g. Every other ingredient must be calculated against 500g, not 300g. Using only the primary flour as your base inflates all your other percentages.
Mistake 4: Forgetting That Starter Affects True Hydration
For everyday baking, treating your starter as a single line item is fine. But if you’re troubleshooting hydration problems and wondering why your 70% hydration dough seems wetter than expected, remember: your starter contains water that isn’t counted in your “water” line. A 150g starter at 100% hydration is adding 75g of water to your dough that doesn’t show up in the formula unless you account for it.
Mistake 5: Changing Only One Percentage Without Considering Its Interactions
Increasing hydration by 10% changes more than just how wet the dough feels, it also affects fermentation speed, gluten development, and shaping behavior. Increasing your starter percentage speeds fermentation, which changes your bulk time. Increasing sugar boosts browning and accelerates yeast activity. These things interact. When I’m adjusting a formula, I change one variable at a time, bake it, and evaluate before I change anything else.
Frequently Asked Questions About Baker’s Percentages
Because each percentage is a ratio relative to the flour weight, not a share of the total recipe weight. Every ingredient is compared to flour individually. So 70% water means ’70g of water for every 100g of flour.’ Add 2% salt, 20% starter, and you get 192% total. That’s right and expected.
If you think of it like a reference standard (flour = the measuring stick everything else is measured against), the math makes more intuitive sense.
How do I calculate baker’s percentages with multiple types of flour?
Add all flour types together to get your total flour weight, and that combined total is 100%. Then calculate every other ingredient against that combined total.
For example: 300g bread flour + 200g whole wheat = 500g total flour = 100%. Water at 350g = 350 ÷ 500 × 100 = 70%.
Should I include my sourdough starter in the hydration calculation?
For everyday baking: no, treat the starter as a single line item.
For comparing your recipe to another baker’s formula or troubleshooting unexpected fermentation behavior: yes, break the starter into its flour and water components and add them to the relevant lines.
My Same Day Sourdough shows 66% water in the simple formula, but the true hydration (including starter water) is closer to 70%.
How do I use baker’s percentages to troubleshoot a problem with my bread?
Write your recipe out in baker’s percentages, then compare it to a reference formula at a similar hydration level.
Look specifically at: salt (should be 1.8-2.2%), hydration (does it match what your flour can handle?), starter percentage (appropriate for your room temperature and timing?), and any inclusion percentages (too high?).
Hydration percentage is one specific baker’s percentage: the ratio of water to flour. When bakers say “this is an 80% hydration dough,” they mean the water weight equals 80% of the flour weight. Baker’s percentage is the broader system, hydration is just one number within it.
Yes, though it’s less common. Baker’s percentages can be applied to cookies, brownies, and pastry to analyze fat-to-flour ratios, sugar percentages, and hydration from eggs and butter. In laminated doughs like croissants, bakers use percentages to track the ratio of butter to dough. The system is most standardized in bread baking, but the logic applies anywhere you want consistent, scalable ratios.
Working with Complex Recipes
Once you’re comfortable with the basics, baker’s percentages really earn their keep in complex recipes, the ones with two or three types of flour, enrichments, and a pile of mix-ins.
The rules don’t change. You just have more ingredients to track.
Inclusion example: Lemon Blueberry Sourdough
Inclusion percentages sit outside the base formula, they don’t change your flour, water, salt, or starter ratios. They’re added as separate line items so they scale proportionally.
This recipe runs at 35% blueberries, which is at the high end of what I’d recommend. At that level, the blueberries release enough juice during baking to noticeably affect the crumb’s moisture content.
| Ingredient | Weight (g) | Percentage (%) | Math | 1250g Flour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flour | 500 | 100% | 1250g × 1 = | 1250g |
| Water | 375 | 75% | 1250g × 0.75 = | 938g |
| Starter | 100 | 20% | 1250g × 0.20 = | 250g |
| Salt | 14 | 2.8% | 1250g × 0.028 = | 35g |
| Granulated sugar | 30 | 6% | 1250g × 0.06 = | 75g |
| Blueberries | 175 | 35% | 1250g × 0.35 = | 438g |
| Brown Sugar | 25 | 5% | 1250g × 0.05 = | 63g |
Observations: 438g of blueberries in a large batch, more than a full pint. The percentages make that obvious immediately. If I were scaling this for a big batch and thought “that seems like a lot of blueberries,” the formula would confirm it. That’s baker’s math working exactly as intended: giving you information, not just instructions.
Adapting Your Recipes
Baker's percentages are particularly helpful when converting recipes that use volume measurements into weight-based formulas. Start by weighing your ingredients the first time you make the recipe, and then calculate each ingredient’s percentage in relation to the total flour weight. This not only makes scaling the recipe easier but also provides consistency every time you bake.
Notes From The Crave Kitchen:
Baker’s percentages are one of those skills that doesn’t feel useful until suddenly it feels essential. There’s a before and an after.
Before: you follow a recipe. You trust the grams without understanding why they are what they are. When something goes wrong, you have no diagnostic tool beyond “try it again.”
After: you see a recipe as a formula. You look at the hydration and know how the dough will feel in your hands. You see the starter percentage and know roughly how much time you have. You see the salt percentage and know whether the bread is going to taste right. When something goes wrong, you have a number to audit.
Converting your favorite recipe to baker’s percentages takes about five minutes. Write down the weights. Divide each ingredient by the flour. Multiply by 100. Write those numbers down somewhere you won’t lose them. Then the next time you bake that recipe, look at the percentages before you start, not just the grams, and start building the mental picture of what you’re making before your hands touch the dough.
That’s when things get interesting!
If you have questions about your own formula or want to share a recipe you’ve converted, drop it in the comments, I read every one and respond as soon as possible!
