Bread Hydration Calculator

Dough hydration is the ratio of total liquid weight to total flour weight in a recipe, expressed as a percentage. For example, if you use 500g of flour and 350g of water, your hydration is 70% (350 ÷ 500 × 100). It directly affects how wet, sticky, and open-crumbed your final bread will be.

Baker's percentages express each ingredient's weight as a percentage of the total flour weight — not the total dough weight. Flour is always 100%, and everything else (water, salt, starter, yeast) is calculated relative to that. This system makes it easy to scale recipes up or down and compare different formulas.

It depends on the bread type. Low hydration (50–60%) suits bagels, pretzels, and firm doughs. Medium hydration (65–70%) is ideal for classic sandwich loaves and baguettes. High hydration (75–85%) is common for sourdough, ciabatta, and open-crumb artisan breads. Very high hydration (85%+) is used for focaccia and extremely open-crumb loaves — but requires more skill to handle.

Sourdough starter contributes both flour and water to your dough, so it affects the true hydration of the final dough. A 100% hydration starter (equal parts flour and water by weight) adds equal amounts of each. This calculator accounts for your starter's hydration to give you the real overall dough hydration, not just the directly-added water.

A 100% hydration starter is fed with equal weights of flour and water — for example, 50g flour and 50g water. This is the most common hydration for home bakers and is the default in this calculator. Some bakers maintain stiffer starters (50–70% hydration) or more liquid ones (125%+), which will shift the final dough hydration if you don't account for it.

Yes. Any liquid added to your dough — milk, buttermilk, juice, oil — contributes to the overall hydration. Milk is roughly 87% water by weight, but for baking purposes most bakers count liquids like milk at their full weight when calculating hydration. This calculator includes a field for additional liquids so your hydration figure is as accurate as possible.

Higher hydration means more water relative to flour, which makes the gluten network wetter and the dough stickier. Techniques like stretch-and-fold during bulk fermentation, using wet hands instead of adding more flour, and cold proofing help manage high-hydration doughs. With practice, 75–80% hydration becomes very manageable and produces beautifully open crumb structures.

A good rule of thumb is 1.8% to 2.2% of your flour weight in salt. For 500g of flour, that's 9g to 11g of salt. Salt strengthens the gluten network, controls fermentation speed, and is essential for flavor. This calculator shows your salt as a baker's percentage so you can check you're in the right range.