Dough hydration & baker’s percentage calculator
Hydration is the weight of water divided by the weight of flour. Count the flour and water inside your starter, or your numbers will be off.
Enter decimals or fractions such as 1 1/2. Hydration uses weight: for cups, spoons and liquid measures, enter the recipe’s grams per unit or weigh that amount. Flour, water, salt and starter have different weights per cup. Volume-based results are estimates; use the recipe’s gram amounts when supplied. Changing a unit keeps the entered amount, so enter the amount in the new unit.
How it works
Baker’s percentages express every ingredient as a percentage of the total flour weight. A levain at 100% hydration is half flour and half water by weight, so 200 g of it adds 100 g of flour and 100 g of water to the totals.
- Hydration = total water ÷ total flour × 100
- Salt % = salt ÷ total flour × 100 (typically about 1.8–2.2%)
- Levain % = levain weight ÷ total flour × 100
Calculations keep full precision; only the displayed grams are rounded. Formula version 1.0.0. Liquids other than water (milk, eggs) contain less than 100% water, so treat their hydration contribution as approximate.