Baker's Percentage

Measure it like
a baker, not a chemist.

Set your flour weight and dial in hydration, starter and salt as percentages. The gram amounts follow — no mental math at the counter.

Ingredients 4 inputs

Flour total, grams
Hydration % of flour
Starter % of flour
Salt % of flour

Totals ready to weigh

75% Hydration
Flour 500 g
Water 375 g
Starter 100 g
Salt 10 g
Total dough 985 g

How this works: everything is measured against your flour weight. A recipe at 75% hydration and 20% starter means water is 75% of the flour's weight and starter is 20% of it — the same logic professional bakeries use to scale a loaf up or down without breaking the recipe.

Questions worth asking

Not the textbook definitions — the things that actually trip people up at the counter.

Why do bakers measure in percentages instead of cups?
A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120g to 150g depending on how it's scooped — that's a 25% swing before you've even started. Percentages fix the recipe to the flour's actual weight, so a loaf that works in your kitchen works exactly the same in someone else's, with a different flour bag entirely.
Does more starter make sourer bread?
Not really — it's a common assumption, but sourness comes mostly from how long and how cool the dough ferments, not how much starter went in. A small amount given a long, cold rise in the fridge often tastes tangier than a large amount rushed through a warm afternoon.
Is 100% hydration just "double the water"?
It looks that way on paper, but it isn't — 100% hydration means water equals flour by weight, not that you've doubled some baseline amount. Go from 70% to 100% and the dough doesn't just get wetter, it crosses into an entirely different handling category, from something you shape by hand to something you persuade with wet fingertips.
Why does the same recipe behave differently in July than in January?
Your kitchen's temperature is a silent ingredient. Warm summer air can speed fermentation enough that a loaf which took 6 hours in winter is ready in 3 — same flour, same starter, same percentages, completely different timeline.
Is discarded starter actually wasted?
It's unfed, not dead — discard still has flavor and a little lift left in it, which is why it turns up in pancakes, crackers, and pizza dough in a lot of baking traditions. What it can't do is raise a loaf on its own; for that it needs to be fed and given time to build strength again.
Why do professional recipes always say "flour: 100%" even with several flours mixed in?
Because every other ingredient is measured against the combined flour weight, not just one type. Mix rye and white flour and they're added together first — that total becomes the 100% baseline everything else in the recipe is scaled from.