Baker's percentage

A way of writing a recipe in which the weight of every ingredient is given as a percentage of the total flour weight.

Baker's percentage: a baker's workbench with flour, water, salt and yeast measured into separate small bowls on a digital scale, a bread
  • Measurement, dietary and professional terminology

Also called: baker's math

Flour is always 100 percent. A bread with 1,000 grams of flour and 650 grams of water is described as 65 percent hydration, and salt at 2 percent means 20 grams. The percentages do not add up to 100; they describe the proportions, so a formula can be scaled to any batch size and compared with others at a glance.

Bakers use it to see how wet, rich or sweet a dough is and to adjust recipes predictably.

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Tools for this

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Related entries

Sources

Written by VanillaGoods in our own words from these sources. Last reviewed October 15, 2026.

  1. Basic Kitchen and Food Service Management: Converting and Adjusting Recipes and Formulas, BCcampus Open Publishing (BC Cook Articulation Committee)
  2. Baker's Percent, Open Washington (Eunice Graham, Culinary Math)
  3. Effect of Baking Absorption on Bread Yield, Crumb Moisture, and Crumb Water Activity (Puhr & D'Appolonia, 1992), Cereal Chemistry (Cereals & Grains Association / AACC)