Kitchen
Bread calculator
Enter the flour, or the dough you want to end up with; water, salt and yeast follow from baker’s percentages. Presets come from my own sourdough bread and focaccia recipes.
Calculator
Work out your dough
Presets
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Baker’s percentage
What the percentages mean
- Everything is measured against the flour, which is always 100%. 70% water on 500 g of flour means 350 g of water; 2% salt means 10 g.
- Water is the dial that changes the most: around 65% gives a firm dough that is easy to shape; 75–80% gives the open, airy crumb of a country loaf or a focaccia, and a stickier dough.
- Salt usually sits between 1.8% and 2.2%. In my sourdough bread it is 2%.
- A starter at 100% hydration is half flour, half water. That is why the true hydration of a sourdough is a little higher than the water figure alone.
Swapping yeasts
One yeast for another
- Going by my yeast table: 1 g of fresh yeast ≈ 0.5 g of active dry ≈ 0.375 g of instant.
- In my focaccia recipe, 200 g of sourdough starter can be replaced with 9 g of active dry or 6 g of instant yeast.
- In a warm kitchen, use less yeast or starter, or let the dough rise in the fridge.