08/12/2025
useful info
At some point in your baking journey, you’ll start seeing recipes written like this:
- Flour: 100%
- Water: 70%
- Salt: 2%
- Starter: 20%
And you might be thinking… “How can that add up to more than 100%? This doesn’t look like normal math.”
And you’re right. It isn’t regular math, it’s baker’s math.
In baker’s math, flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient is measured as a percentage of flour, not the total dough weight. Once that clicks, everything becomes simpler.
•••
Start with the flour.
If your recipe begins with:
500g flour
That is your 100%.
Now let’s say your dough contains:
- 500g flour
- 350g water
- 10g salt
- 100g starter
Use the same formula:
(Ingredient weight ÷ Flour weight) × 100
Let’s calculate:
- Water → (350 ÷ 500) × 100 = 70% hydration
- Salt → (10 ÷ 500) × 100 = 2% salt
- Starter → (100 ÷ 500) × 100 = 20% starter
So your dough written in baker’s percentages becomes:
- Flour: 100%
- Water: 70%
- Starter: 20%
- Salt: 2%
This tells you exactly what kind of dough you have: moderate hydration, mild salt, medium fermentation strength.
•••
Now flip it—go from percentages to grams.
Let’s say someone gives you this formula:
- 100% flour
- 70% water
- 20% starter
- 2% salt
But you want to bake using 800g of flour.
Convert percentages to decimals and multiply by flour:
- Water → 0.70 × 800 = 560g
- Starter → 0.20 × 800 = 160g
- Salt → 0.02 × 800 = 16g
Your recipe becomes:
- 800g flour
- 560g water
- 160g starter
- 16g salt
Now you have clear weights and also know exactly what the dough formula is.
•••
Why this matters.
Let’s say someone posts their dough, and it rises beautifully, has the right airy crumb, good strength, not too sticky.
Instead of asking, “What exact recipe did you use?”
You can look at percentages, decide how much flour you want, and scale everything automatically, whether you bake one loaf, three loaves, or just want to test a mini dough using 200g flour.
Or let’s say you want to reverse a dough:
You know dough total weight
You know the baker’s percentages
You can find your exact flour weight
Then rebuild the formula from it.
That’s how professional bakers scale dough for cafés, classes, and bake days consistently.
•••
Quick recap:
Flour is ALWAYS 100%.
Everything else = (ingredient ÷ flour) × 100.
To convert percentages to weight = flour × percentage as decimal.
Once you see dough in percentages instead of random grams, you understand it.
You don’t just follow recipes, you adjust them confidently.
And once that clicks, bread stops feeling like luck and starts feeling predictable.
As always, I hope this helps someone.
PS: If you still struggle with baker's math, preferment, and sourdough calculations, check out the recipe maker in the comments.
