Sourdough Recipe Calculator — Baker's Percentages
Scale sourdough recipes by dough weight. Calculate hydration, starter, and salt using baker's percentages.
Baker's Percentages
In bread baking, all ingredients are expressed as a percentage of the flour weight. Flour is always 100%. 72% hydration means 72g of water per 100g of flour. 20% starter means 20g of starter per 100g of flour. This system makes scaling recipes trivial — double the flour, double everything else proportionally. It also makes comparing recipes meaningful: a 72% hydration dough handles very differently from an 80% hydration dough.
Hydration Guide
65-68%: Beginner-friendly. Easier to shape, less sticky. Good for sandwich loaves. 70-75%: Standard sourdough. Open crumb, good flavor, moderate difficulty. 76-82%: High hydration. Large holes, wet dough — requires strong shaping skills. 83%+: Ciabatta/focaccia territory. Very wet, very open crumb. Not for beginners.
The most common sourdough failure: under-fermentation (dense, gummy crumb) or over-fermentation (flat, sour, collapsed). The fix is not a different recipe — it is learning to read your dough. The "poke test" (poke the dough; if it springs back slowly, it is ready) is the single most important skill in sourdough baking.
