Calculate hydration percentage, water needed for any target hydration, or blend multiple flour types. Includes baker's percentage breakdowns, salt and yeast weights, and a visual dough consistency scale covering every bread style from sandwich loaf to ciabatta.
Different bread styles target different hydration ranges. Higher hydration creates a more open, irregular crumb with a crispier crust; lower hydration gives a tighter, sandwich-style crumb that holds its shape better.
Easy to handle. Soft, tight crumb that slices cleanly. Best for beginners.
Medium hydration. Light, thin crust. Requires good shaping technique.
High hydration, long cold ferment. Open crumb, minimal effort.
Very wet, sticky dough. Large irregular holes. Requires stretch-and-fold technique.
Poured into a pan with generous olive oil. Chewy, airy, no shaping needed.
Firm enough to stretch and toss. Crispy base. Neapolitan goes slightly higher.
Different flours absorb water at different rates. When blending flours, your actual dough may feel wetter or drier than the hydration percentage suggests — whole grain flours in particular continue absorbing water after mixing.
Yeast amounts in baker's percentage are calculated from total flour weight. The three common yeast forms are not interchangeable in equal amounts — use this conversion table when substituting one type for another.
| Yeast Type | Baker's % (typical) | Per 500g flour | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instant / Fast-Rise | 1% | 5g (≈1¾ tsp) | Add directly to flour. No proofing needed. Most efficient. |
| Active Dry | 1.5% | 7.5g (≈2¼ tsp) | Proof in warm water (105–115°F) first. Use 50% more than instant. |
| Fresh / Cake Yeast | 3% | 15g | Crumble into dough or proof. Use 3× the amount of instant. Refrigerate. |
| Sourdough Starter | 15–25% | 75–125g | 100% hydration starter assumed. Adjust water in recipe to compensate for water in starter. |
Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a percentage of the total flour weight, where flour always equals 100%. This is the professional baking standard used in recipe development, scaling, and formula documentation. If your recipe calls for 500g flour and 375g water, the hydration is 375 ÷ 500 × 100 = 75%. If it also calls for 9g salt, the salt percentage is 9 ÷ 500 × 100 = 1.8%.
The power of baker's percentage is recipe scaling. If you need to double the recipe, simply double every ingredient by weight. If you want to bake a loaf that uses 750g flour instead of 500g, multiply each baker's percentage by 7.5 to get the new gram weights. This is why professional bakers never measure by volume — cups and teaspoons are imprecise, affected by how you scoop, and impossible to scale reliably. Every serious home baker eventually moves to a kitchen scale and baker's percentages.
Whole wheat flour contains the entire wheat berry — bran, germ, and endosperm — ground together. The bran (the outer husk layer) is the culprit for extra water absorption. Bran particles are like tiny sponges that soak up liquid, but they also physically cut gluten strands as the dough develops, which is why 100% whole wheat breads tend to be denser than white flour breads of the same hydration. To partially offset this, bakers soak whole wheat flour in water before mixing (called autolyse), giving the bran time to hydrate fully before gluten development begins. A recipe that uses 75% hydration for white bread flour might need 80–85% hydration when half the flour is swapped for whole wheat, just to achieve the same dough consistency. This calculator uses a weighted average when you blend flours in Mode 3 — but your hands are the final judge; adjust water in the last few minutes of mixing.
Start between 65% and 70% hydration. This range is forgiving — the dough is soft enough to develop good gluten structure but firm enough to hold its shape during shaping. Doughs below 60% feel stiff and take longer to develop; doughs above 75% are sticky, slack, and hard to shape until you've developed the tactile sense for when the gluten is strong enough to hold the water without spreading. A 65% hydration sandwich loaf or dinner roll recipe is the best possible entry point. Once you can reliably shape and bake at 65%, move to 70–72% for a rustic country loaf, then try 78–80% for an open-crumb artisan bread. The jump from 70% to 80% is the single hardest skill progression in bread baking — the dough feels completely different and requires stretch-and-fold or coil fold techniques rather than traditional kneading.
Higher hydration doughs produce cracklier, thicker crusts when baked in a Dutch oven or with steam. During the first 15 minutes in the oven, the steam released from the wet dough keeps the exterior moist, allowing it to expand fully (oven spring) before the crust sets. When that steam escapes and the surface dries out, it caramelizes into a thick, crackling crust. Lower hydration doughs don't release as much steam, so they form their crust earlier, limiting oven spring and producing a thinner, softer crust. If you want a thick, crackly artisan crust from a lower hydration dough, baking in a covered Dutch oven with a splash of water helps compensate. Conversely, if your higher hydration focaccia or ciabatta is getting too thick a crust for your taste, reducing bake time or wrapping the loaf in a cloth while cooling traps steam and softens the exterior. Hydration sets the baseline; your baking method fine-tunes the result.