Bread Dough Calculator

How the calculator works

You tell the calculator how much dough you want, and it works back to the ingredients using baker’s percentages, where every ingredient is measured against the flour.

total dough = loaves x dough per loaf

flour = total dough / (1 + hydration + salt + yeast + fat + sugar)

The percentages go into that sum as decimals, so 65 percent is 0.65. Once the flour is known, each other ingredient is the flour weight times its percentage.

Starting from the dough weight is what makes this useful. You know the size of your tin or banneton. You do not want to guess a flour weight and find out afterward that the loaf is too big.

Worked example

Two sandwich loaves of 800 grams each, at 65 percent hydration, 2 percent salt and 1 percent yeast.

1. Total dough: 2 x 800 = 1,600 grams.
2. Flour: 1,600 / (1 + 0.65 + 0.02 + 0.01) = 1,600 / 1.68 = 952 grams.
3. Water: 952 x 0.65 = 619 grams.
4. Salt: 952 x 0.02 = 19 grams.
5. Yeast: 952 x 0.01 = 9.5 grams.

Check: 952 + 619 + 19 + 9.5 = 1,600 grams, allowing for rounding.

Choosing the numbers

The calculator opens with a plain lean dough: 65 percent water, 2 percent salt, 1 percent yeast. Those are only starting values. Replace them with the percentages from your own recipe.

Hydration sets how the dough handles. Lower numbers give a firm dough that is easy to shape. Higher numbers give a softer, stickier dough.

Salt is usually close to 2 percent of the flour. It seasons the bread and slows the yeast a little.

Yeast depends on the type you use and how long you want the dough to rise. Less yeast and more time is a common trade. The percentage here is by weight, whatever kind of yeast it is. If your recipe is written for a different kind than you have, the Yeast Converter gives the equal amount.

Fat and sugar are for enriched doughs such as sandwich bread, rolls and brioche. Leave them at zero for a lean loaf.

Turning a recipe into percentages

If your recipe is written in grams, convert it once and you can make it at any size afterward.

Divide each ingredient by the flour weight and multiply by 100. A recipe with 500 grams of flour, 340 grams of water, 10 grams of salt and 7 grams of yeast is:

• Water: 340 / 500 = 68 percent
• Salt: 10 / 500 = 2 percent
• Yeast: 7 / 500 = 1.4 percent

Enter those three numbers here, set the loaves and the dough weight, and the calculator returns the recipe at the new size. The Baker’s Percentage Calculator does the first step for you.

Dough weight and loaf size

The dough weight you need depends on what you are baking in.

The most reliable way to find it is to weigh. Next time you make a loaf that fills your tin the way you like, put the shaped dough on the scale before it goes in and write the number on the tin or in your recipe book. That is your dough weight for that tin from then on.

For rolls and buns, decide the weight of one and enter that as the “dough per loaf”, with the number of rolls as the “loaves”. Sixteen rolls of 60 grams is the same math as two loaves of 480.

What comes out lighter than what went in

Bread loses weight in the oven as water turns to steam. An 800 gram piece of dough does not make an 800 gram loaf. If you need a baked loaf of a particular weight, for example to sell, make the dough heavier than the target and weigh a cooled loaf from your first batch to see how much yours loses.

Tips and common mistakes

Weigh the water. Hydration only works when both flour and water are weighed. One milliliter of water is one gram, so the jug can stay in the cupboard.

Hold back some water with a new flour. Flours absorb differently. Mix with a little less than the calculated amount and add the rest once you see how the dough feels.

Divide the dough by weight. Put each piece on the scale so the loaves are the same size and bake in the same time.

Keep the percentages, change the batch. Once a recipe works, its percentages do not change. Only the loaf count and dough weight do.