Open a professional bread book and you'll see formulas like "70% hydration, 2% salt, 1% yeast." That's baker's percentages — the system pro bakers use to express bread recipes. Once you understand it, scaling, comparing, and adjusting bread recipes becomes trivial.

The basic idea

In baker's percentages, flour is always 100%. Every other ingredient is expressed as a percentage of total flour weight.

  • Flour: 100% (the reference)
  • Water: hydration % (60–90% typically)
  • Salt: 1.8–2.2%
  • Yeast: 0.4–1.5% depending on rise time
  • Other (oil, sugar, eggs): varies by bread style

Note: percentages can sum to more than 100% — they're not a "share of total dough," they're a "ratio to flour." Total dough weight is the sum of all percentages × your chosen flour amount.

Worked example: classic French baguette

Standard formula:

  • Flour: 100%
  • Water: 70%
  • Salt: 2%
  • Yeast: 0.5% (slow fermentation)

For a 1 kg loaf — pick 600 g flour as the reference:

  • Flour: 600 g
  • Water: 600 × 0.70 = 420 g
  • Salt: 600 × 0.02 = 12 g
  • Yeast: 600 × 0.005 = 3 g
  • Total dough weight: 1035 g

To make a 2 kg dough instead: scale flour to 1200 g, multiply each other ingredient by the same percentage. Done. No proportions to recompute.

Hydration: the dominant variable

Hydration percentage (water ÷ flour) is the most important number in any bread formula. It controls:

  • Crumb texture (open and airy vs tight and dense)
  • Crust thickness
  • Dough handling (sticky vs firm)
  • Oven spring

Standard hydration ranges

  • 50–60%: Stiff doughs. Bagels, pretzels, pita. Easy to handle but dense crumb.
  • 60–65%: Standard sandwich loaves. Pullman bread, brioche, pizza dough.
  • 65–70%: Standard sourdough and artisan loaves. The most common range for everyday bread.
  • 70–75%: Lean, open-crumb artisan loaves. Slightly stickier dough.
  • 75–80%: Ciabatta and rustic Italian loaves. Wet, hard to shape.
  • 80–90%: Very wet doughs. Focaccia, no-knead loaves, some sourdough varieties. Often handled in tubs rather than shaped.
  • 90%+: Specialist territory — high-hydration sourdoughs, extremely open crumb, requires advanced shaping technique.

Higher hydration = more challenging to handle but better crumb opening.

Salt percentage

Most bread recipes use 1.8–2.2% salt:

  • 1.5% — barely salted
  • 2.0% — standard
  • 2.5% — assertive (some Tuscan / Italian recipes)

Salt does more than season. It strengthens the gluten network, slows yeast activity (giving better fermentation), and improves crust color. Below 1.5% and the bread tastes flat; above 2.5% and the rise is inhibited.

Yeast percentage

Yeast percentage depends on fermentation length:

  • Same-day bread: 1.0–1.5% instant yeast (fast rise)
  • Overnight cold ferment: 0.4–0.7% (slow rise)
  • Sourdough / wild yeast: 0% commercial yeast; the starter provides leavening

Lower yeast = longer fermentation = more flavor development. This is why artisan loaves taste better than supermarket bread — they ferment longer with less yeast.

Reading a recipe in baker's percentages

Practical translation:

  • "100% bread flour, 75% water, 2% salt, 0.5% instant yeast" = high-hydration artisan loaf, slow ferment
  • "100% bread flour, 60% water, 2% salt, 1% yeast, 5% sugar, 4% oil" = sandwich loaf, faster ferment
  • "100% all-purpose, 65% water, 2% salt, 0.5% yeast, 1% diastatic malt" = standard French country bread

The formula tells you everything about the dough's character at a glance.

Calculating dough weight from formula

Total dough weight = flour weight × (sum of all percentages).

Example: 100% + 70% + 2% + 0.5% = 172.5%. So 600 g flour produces 600 × 1.725 = 1,035 g of dough. Useful when you want a specific final weight.

Adjusting an existing recipe

Want to make your sandwich loaf wetter and more open-crumb?

  1. Start at 60% hydration (current recipe).
  2. Bump to 70%. So 600 g flour now uses 420 g water (was 360 g).
  3. Lower yeast to 0.6% for slower fermentation.
  4. Result: more open crumb, more flavor, slightly trickier to handle.

Once you express your bread in baker's percentages, modifying it becomes systematic, not trial-and-error.

Compute it

Our bread hydration calculator takes your flour and water weights and returns the hydration percentage plus salt and yeast percentages. Useful for analyzing recipes you find online and comparing them to professional formulas.