Baker's Percentages Explained: The Only Math a Bread Baker Needs
A complete guide to baker's percentages — the universal language of bread recipes. Learn how to read, use, and convert baker's math to scale any recipe, calculate hydration, and compare formulas at a glance.
Baker's percentages are the simplest and most useful piece of math in all of bread baking. Once you understand them, you can read any professional formula, scale any recipe to any size, compare two recipes at a glance, and calculate hydration without thinking twice. They are the universal language that professional bakers worldwide have used for over a century.
And yet they confuse almost every beginner, because they do not work like normal percentages. In baker's math, the numbers do not add up to 100%. That is by design, and once you see why, it clicks permanently.
This guide explains baker's percentages from scratch, walks through worked examples, shows you how to use them for scaling and analysis, and introduces the German Teigausbeute system used in Austrian and German baking.
What Baker's Percentages Are
In baker's percentages, every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight. Flour is always 100%. Everything else — water, salt, starter, seeds, butter — is calculated relative to flour.
This is different from normal percentages, where all parts add up to 100%. In baker's math, the percentages will always total more than 100%, and that is correct.
A Simple Example
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 500g | 100% |
| Water | 375g | 75% |
| Salt | 10g | 2% |
| Sourdough starter | 75g | 15% |
The percentages add up to 192%. That is fine. Each percentage simply tells you the ratio of that ingredient to flour.
Why This System Works
The genius of baker's percentages is that they separate the ratio from the scale. A recipe at 75% hydration is 75% hydration whether you are making one loaf or one hundred. If you know the percentages, you can produce any amount of dough by simply choosing how much flour to use and multiplying.
How to Calculate Baker's Percentages
From a Recipe to Percentages
If you have a recipe in grams and want to convert it to baker's percentages:
Baker's % = (ingredient weight ÷ total flour weight) × 100
Example: A recipe uses 600g flour, 420g water, 12g salt, and 90g starter.
- Water: (420 ÷ 600) × 100 = 70%
- Salt: (12 ÷ 600) × 100 = 2%
- Starter: (90 ÷ 600) × 100 = 15%
From Percentages to a Recipe
If you have baker's percentages and want to calculate actual weights:
Ingredient weight = (baker's % ÷ 100) × flour weight
Example: You want to make a batch with 800g flour at 72% hydration, 2% salt, 10% starter.
- Water: (72 ÷ 100) × 800 = 576g
- Salt: (2 ÷ 100) × 800 = 16g
- Starter: (10 ÷ 100) × 800 = 80g
Understanding Hydration
Hydration is the most important baker's percentage because it determines dough texture, handling properties, and crumb structure.
Hydration = (total water weight ÷ total flour weight) × 100
| Hydration | Dough character | Typical breads |
|---|---|---|
| 55–60% | Stiff, easy to handle | Bagels, pretzels |
| 60–65% | Firm, sliceable | Sandwich bread, rolls |
| 65–72% | Moderate, versatile | Standard sourdough |
| 72–78% | Soft, slightly sticky | Rustic sourdough |
| 78–85% | Very wet, sticky | Ciabatta, high-hydration sourdough |
The Starter Complication
Here is where baker's percentages get slightly tricky. Your sourdough starter contains both flour and water. If your starter is fed at a 1:1 ratio (equal parts flour and water by weight), then a starter at 100% hydration is half flour and half water.
This means the starter contributes flour and water to your total dough, and for precise calculations, you should account for this.
Example: Accounting for Starter
Your recipe:
- Flour: 450g
- Water: 338g
- Starter (100% hydration): 90g
- Salt: 9g
The 90g of starter at 100% hydration contains:
- 45g flour (half)
- 45g water (half)
True totals:
- Total flour: 450g + 45g = 495g
- Total water: 338g + 45g = 383g
True hydration: (383 ÷ 495) × 100 = 77.4%
Without accounting for the starter, you would calculate: (338 ÷ 450) × 100 = 75.1%.
The difference is small (about 2 percentage points) and at typical starter percentages (10–20%) it rarely matters in practice. But for precision, account for the flour and water in your starter.
Pre-Fermented Flour Percentage
Professional bakers track how much of the total flour has been pre-fermented (spent time in the starter before being added to the final dough). This affects fermentation speed, flavor, and structure.
Pre-fermented flour % = (flour in starter ÷ total flour) × 100
In the example above: (45 ÷ 495) × 100 = 9.1% pre-fermented flour.
Higher pre-fermented flour (15–25%) means more fermentation activity from the start. Lower (5–10%) means a slower, more controlled build.
Scaling Recipes
Baker's percentages make scaling trivial.
Scaling Up
You have a recipe for one loaf using 500g flour and want to make three loaves.
Total flour needed: 500g × 3 = 1500g.
Every other ingredient: multiply its baker's percentage by 1500g.
- Water at 75%: 0.75 × 1500 = 1125g
- Salt at 2%: 0.02 × 1500 = 30g
- Starter at 15%: 0.15 × 1500 = 225g
Scaling to a Target Dough Weight
Sometimes you know how much total dough you want rather than how much flour.
Flour weight = target dough weight ÷ (sum of all baker's percentages ÷ 100)
Example: You want 900g of dough. Your formula is flour 100%, water 75%, salt 2%, starter 15%.
Sum of percentages: 100 + 75 + 2 + 15 = 192
Flour: 900 ÷ 1.92 = 468.75g (round to 469g) Water: 469 × 0.75 = 351.75g (round to 352g) Salt: 469 × 0.02 = 9.38g (round to 9g) Starter: 469 × 0.15 = 70.35g (round to 70g)
Check: 469 + 352 + 9 + 70 = 900g.
Comparing Recipes
Baker's percentages let you compare two recipes instantly, even if they are written for different quantities.
Recipe A: 500g flour, 375g water, 10g salt, 100g starter Recipe B: 750g flour, 525g water, 15g salt, 75g starter
Convert to percentages:
| Recipe A | Recipe B | |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 100% |
| Water | 75% | 70% |
| Salt | 2% | 2% |
| Starter | 20% | 10% |
Now you can see: Recipe A is wetter (75% vs 70% hydration) and uses more starter (20% vs 10%). Recipe A will ferment faster and have a softer dough. Recipe B will ferment more slowly and be easier to handle. All of that is visible at a glance from the percentages.
The Teigausbeute (TA) System
In German and Austrian baking, you will often encounter a different system: Teigausbeute, abbreviated TA. This is common in German-language recipes and bakery texts.
TA = ((flour weight + water weight) ÷ flour weight) × 100
The TA is always above 100. A TA of 170 means: for every 100g of flour, there are 70g of water — which is exactly the same as 70% hydration.
Converting Between Systems
| TA | Hydration |
|---|---|
| TA 155 | 55% |
| TA 160 | 60% |
| TA 165 | 65% |
| TA 170 | 70% |
| TA 175 | 75% |
| TA 180 | 80% |
Hydration = TA − 100 TA = Hydration + 100
When You See TA in a Recipe
A German recipe that says "TA 168" means 68% hydration. It is the same information, just expressed differently. Austrian and German professional bakers use TA because it directly tells you the yield — how much dough you get per unit of flour.
Multi-Flour Formulas
When a recipe uses multiple flours, baker's percentages treat all flour combined as 100%.
Example
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour (W700) | 350g | 70% |
| Whole wheat flour | 100g | 20% |
| Rye flour | 50g | 10% |
| Total flour | 500g | 100% |
| Water | 375g | 75% |
| Salt | 10g | 2% |
| Starter | 75g | 15% |
Each individual flour is expressed as its percentage of total flour. This tells you the flour blend at a glance: 70% white, 20% whole wheat, 10% rye.
Use baking calculators directly in the proofit app — baking made simple.
See the sourdough app →Frequently Asked Questions
Why do baker's percentages add up to more than 100%? Because flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient is expressed relative to flour, not to the total. The sum tells you the total yield ratio — how much dough you get per unit of flour. A sum of 190% means you get 1.9 kg of dough for every 1 kg of flour.
What is the most important baker's percentage to know? Hydration — the water percentage. It determines whether your dough is stiff and easy to handle (60–65%) or soft and sticky (78–85%). It is the single most impactful ratio in bread baking and the one you should always calculate or check before starting a recipe.
Do I need to account for flour and water in my starter? For casual baking, no — the difference is small at typical starter percentages (10–20%). For precision or when scaling large batches, yes. A 100% hydration starter is half flour and half water by weight.
What is the difference between baker's percentages and Teigausbeute (TA)? Baker's percentages express each ingredient as a percentage of total flour. TA expresses the ratio of flour-plus-water to flour. TA = hydration + 100. So TA 175 = 75% hydration. They are different notations for the same information.
How do I scale a recipe for a different number of loaves? Convert the recipe to baker's percentages. Multiply the desired flour weight by each percentage. For example, to double a recipe, double the flour weight and multiply every percentage by the new flour weight.
What hydration should I use for my first sourdough? 68–72% is a good starting range. The dough is manageable for beginners but has enough water for a good crumb. As your handling skills improve, you can increase hydration for softer, more open results.
How do I convert a recipe that uses cups to baker's percentages? Weigh the ingredients first by using a standardized cup-to-gram conversion (or better, find a recipe that already uses grams). Then divide each ingredient weight by the total flour weight and multiply by 100.
What does pre-fermented flour percentage mean? It is the fraction of total flour that was fermented in the starter before being added to the final dough. Higher pre-fermented flour (15–25%) means a faster, more active fermentation. Lower (5–10%) means slower, more controlled. It affects both timing and flavor.
Can baker's percentages be used for enriched doughs (brioche, challah)? Yes. Butter, eggs, sugar, and milk are all expressed as percentages of flour. A brioche might be: flour 100%, eggs 40%, butter 40%, sugar 12%, milk 15%, salt 2%, yeast 3%. The system works for any bread formula.