Baker's Percentage Explained, With Worked Pizza Dough Examples
Baker's percentage states every ingredient as a percentage of flour weight, and flour is always 100 percent. For 1,000 g of dough at 65 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt and 0.3 percent instant yeast, the total percentage is 167.8, so flour is 1,000 divided by 1.678, which is 595.9 g, plus 387.4 g water, 14.9 g salt and 1.8 g yeast.
Baker's percentage is a way of writing a dough formula in which every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, and the flour is always 100 percent. It is not a way of dividing up a dough into parts that sum to 100. That distinction is the entire subject, and it is where almost every mistake happens.
The payoff is that one formula scales to any batch size without rewriting anything. A 65 percent hydration dough is 65 percent hydration whether you are making one pizza or forty, and any baker anywhere can read the formula and reproduce it exactly.
How does the arithmetic actually work?
Four lines, and you never need more than these:
| Step | Formula |
|---|---|
| 1. Total percentage | 100 plus hydration plus salt plus yeast, plus oil and sugar if used |
| 2. Flour | total dough weight divided by (total percentage divided by 100) |
| 3. Water | flour multiplied by hydration percentage |
| 4. Everything else | flour multiplied by that ingredient's percentage |
Hydration is water weight divided by flour weight. Say that back to yourself once more, because it means water is measured against the flour and never against the finished dough. A 1,000 g dough at 65 percent hydration does not contain 650 g of water. It contains 387.4 g.
Worked example one: 1,000 g of Neapolitan dough
Four 250 g balls at 65 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt, 0.3 percent instant dry yeast.
Total percentage is 100 plus 65 plus 2.5 plus 0.3, which is 167.8. As a multiplier that is 1.678. Flour is 1,000 divided by 1.678, which is 595.9 g. Water is the unrounded flour weight times 0.65, or 387.4 g. Salt is 595.9 times 0.025, or 14.9 g. Yeast is 595.9 times 0.003, or 1.8 g.
| Ingredient | Percentage | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 595.9 g |
| Water | 65% | 387.4 g |
| Salt | 2.5% | 14.9 g |
| Instant dry yeast | 0.3% | 1.8 g |
| Total | 167.8% | 1,000.0 g |
Now check it. 595.9 plus 387.4 plus 14.9 plus 1.8 equals 1,000.0 g. This check takes five seconds and it catches every arithmetic error you can make in this system. If your numbers do not close, you have divided by the wrong thing.
Worked example two: 500 g at high hydration
Two 250 g balls at 70 percent hydration, 2 percent salt, 0.5 percent instant yeast, a fast same-day dough.
Total percentage is 172.5, so the multiplier is 1.725. Flour is 500 divided by 1.725, which is 289.9 g. Water is 289.9 times 0.70, or 202.9 g. Salt is 5.8 g. Yeast is 1.4 g.
| Ingredient | Percentage | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 289.9 g |
| Water | 70% | 202.9 g |
| Salt | 2% | 5.8 g |
| Instant dry yeast | 0.5% | 1.4 g |
| Total | 172.5% | 500.0 g |
289.9 plus 202.9 plus 5.8 plus 1.4 equals 500.0 g. Note the 1.4 g of yeast. That is the reason a 0.1 g resolution scale is the first thing on every equipment list here: a scale that reads in whole grams cannot distinguish 1.4 g from 1.0 g, and that is a 40 percent error in the ingredient that controls your entire schedule.
Worked example three: six balls at low hydration
1,500 g total at 60 percent hydration, 3 percent salt, 0.4 percent instant yeast, a firm dough for a cooler oven.
| Ingredient | Percentage | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 918.0 g |
| Water | 60% | 550.8 g |
| Salt | 3% | 27.5 g |
| Instant dry yeast | 0.4% | 3.7 g |
| Total | 163.4% | 1,500.0 g |
918.0 plus 550.8 plus 27.5 plus 3.7 equals 1,500.0 g, which divides into six 250 g balls. Weigh the pieces as you divide with a bench scraper : equal balls are what make bake times predictable.
What happens when a formula has oil and sugar?
They join the total percentage exactly like salt and yeast. A New York style dough at 63 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt, 0.1 percent instant yeast, 2 percent oil and 1.5 percent sugar has a total percentage of 169.1.
For a single 380 g ball, flour is 380 divided by 1.691, which is 224.7 g.
| Ingredient | Percentage | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 224.7 g |
| Water | 63% | 141.6 g |
| Salt | 2.5% | 5.6 g |
| Olive oil | 2% | 4.5 g |
| Sugar | 1.5% | 3.4 g |
| Instant dry yeast | 0.1% | 0.2 g |
| Total | 169.1% | 380.0 g |
Those six weights add back to exactly 380.0 g. Note that oil is not counted as hydration even though it is a liquid, because it does not hydrate the flour. It coats gluten strands and shortens them, which is why an oiled dough feels softer and stays tender longer, and why Neapolitan dough, which has none, goes stale within hours.
What about a pan dough at high hydration?
A Roman-style tray dough at 75 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt, 0.15 percent yeast and 2 percent oil for a 900 g tray totals 179.65 percent.
| Ingredient | Percentage | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 501.0 g |
| Water | 75% | 375.7 g |
| Salt | 2.5% | 12.5 g |
| Olive oil | 2% | 10.0 g |
| Instant dry yeast | 0.15% | 0.8 g |
| Total | 179.65% | 900.0 g |
501.0 plus 375.7 plus 12.5 plus 10.0 plus 0.8 equals 900.0 g. Compare the flour figures across the examples: the same 1,000 g of dough needs 622 g of flour at 58 percent hydration and 533 g at 85 percent. Water genuinely displaces flour, which is why a wet dough is a smaller amount of bread for the same weight of dough.
How do I scale a formula up or down?
This is where the system pays for itself, and it is why professional bakers write formulas this way rather than as recipes. Percentages do not change with batch size. Only the flour weight changes, and every other weight follows from it.
Suppose you have a formula you like at 62 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt and 0.2 percent instant yeast, and you have been making four 250 g balls. A friend asks you to bring pizza for nine people, so you need nine 250 g balls, or 2,250 g of dough. You do not scale the old weights by hand and you certainly do not multiply by two and a bit and hope. You go back to the percentages. Total percentage is 164.7, so flour is 2,250 divided by 1.647. Everything else drops out of that single number.
The same works in reverse and it is the more common case. Someone gives you a recipe in cups and you want to know what it actually is. Weigh what the cups produced, convert each ingredient to a percentage of the flour weight, and you can immediately see what you are dealing with: a formula that turns out to be 71 percent hydration explains why the dough was unmanageable, and one at 4 percent salt explains why it fermented so slowly.
There is one thing percentages cannot scale, and it catches people out. Mixing time and fermentation time do not scale with batch size. A 3 kg dough does not need three times the kneading of a 1 kg dough, and it does not ferment three times faster or slower. What does change is thermal behaviour: a large mass holds its own heat and ferments slightly faster in the middle than at the edges, and it takes much longer to chill through in a fridge. For batches above about 2 kg, divide and ball earlier rather than later so the pieces cool evenly.
What percentages should I use for each style?
| Style | Hydration | Salt | Oil | Ball weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neapolitan | 58 to 65% | 2 to 3% | 0% | 230 to 280 g |
| New York | 60 to 65% | 2 to 2.5% | 2 to 3% | 340 to 400 g |
| Detroit and pan | 70 to 80% | 2 to 2.5% | 2 to 4% | 380 to 700 g per pan |
| Roman al taglio | 75 to 85% | 2 to 2.5% | 2 to 3% | By tray area |
| Home oven with steel | 58 to 62% | 2.5% | 0 to 2% | 250 to 300 g |
The baker's percentage chart holds the extended version of this grid, and the dough hydration calculator does the whole conversion for whatever combination you land on.
How much yeast, and in which form?
Yeast percentage is set by how long the dough will ferment and at what temperature, not by batch size. Longer and colder means less. Instant dry yeast is the reference on this site.
| Schedule | Instant dry | Active dry | Fresh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same day, 2 to 4 h | 0.5% | 0.63% | 1.5% |
| Same day, 6 to 8 h | 0.3% | 0.38% | 0.9% |
| 24 h, mostly cold | 0.15% | 0.19% | 0.45% |
| 48 h cold | 0.08% | 0.10% | 0.24% |
| 72 h cold | 0.05% | 0.06% | 0.15% |
Multiply instant by 1.25 for active dry and by 3 for fresh. As a working approximation, yeast activity roughly doubles for every 17F rise in dough temperature, which is why a fast instant-read probe pushed into the dough after mixing tells you more about your schedule than any clock does. Aim for a final dough temperature of 75F to 78F.
Where does flour choice fit in?
Baker's percentage says nothing about which flour to use, and the same percentages behave differently in different flours because protein content changes how much water the dough can actually hold. A 65 percent dough in a fine-milled 00 pizza flour feels quite different from 65 percent in a 12.7 percent protein bread flour , which absorbs more and feels drier at the same number.
This is why hydration is a starting point rather than a target. Mix to the number, then read the dough, and adjust by 2 or 3 points on the next batch rather than adding flour mid-mix. Adding flour after mixing changes every percentage in the formula at once and you lose the ability to reproduce whatever you just made.
The three mistakes that ruin a formula
Calculating flour from the dough weight instead of the total percentage. This is the big one. Taking 65 percent of 1,000 g gives 650 g of water and a batter, not a dough.
Quoting salt against total dough weight. Nutrition labels work that way and dough formulas do not. At 2.5 percent of flour, a 1,000 g Neapolitan dough carries about 14.9 g of salt, which is roughly 1.5 percent of the finished dough weight.
Ignoring the yeast in the total percentage. It is small, and skipping it is tempting, but it moves the divisor and therefore every weight in the formula. Include it.
Two habits make all three impossible. Weigh in grams, never in cups: volume measures of flour vary by up to 20 percent, which is enough to move a dough from 65 percent hydration to 54 percent without you noticing. And check that the components sum back to the total every single time. If you want to see the system applied end to end, the Neapolitan dough guide and the Detroit dough guide both work through complete formulas, and the poolish and biga calculator handles the harder case where flour and water are split between a preferment and a final dough.
Practical kit for all of this is short: a 0.1 g scale, a bench scraper, and somewhere to hold the dough where you can see what it is doing. A graduated straight-sided container turns "has it doubled?" into a reading rather than a guess, and lidded proofing boxes keep divided balls evenly spaced so they hold the shape your arithmetic assumed. The dough ball weight calculator connects the two ends of the system: pizza diameter in, ball weight out, full formula underneath.
Frequently asked questions
What is baker’s percentage in simple terms?
Every ingredient is written as a percentage of the flour weight, and the flour itself is always 100 percent. A dough at 65 percent hydration contains 65 g of water for every 100 g of flour. Because the flour is the reference and not the total, the percentages add up to more than 100, which is not a mistake. That sum is exactly what converts a target dough weight back into a flour weight.
How do I convert a total dough weight into ingredient weights?
Add the percentages to get the total percentage, divide by 100 to get a multiplier, then divide the total dough weight by that multiplier to get flour. Multiply the flour by each ingredient percentage for the rest. For 1,000 g at 65 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt and 0.3 percent yeast, the total is 167.8, so flour is 1,000 divided by 1.678, which is 595.9 g.
Why do my ingredient weights not add up to the dough weight?
Because you calculated flour from the dough weight directly instead of from the total percentage. If you take 1,000 g and call 65 percent of it water, you get 650 g of water and 350 g of flour, which is a dough at 186 percent hydration and effectively a batter. Water has to displace flour inside a fixed total, not be added on top of it. Always check that the components sum back.
Is salt percentage based on flour or on total dough?
On flour, like everything else in the system. At 2.5 percent salt with 595.9 g of flour you need 14.9 g of salt, not 25 g. This trips people up because nutritional labelling works on total weight, so the same dough is about 1.5 percent salt by finished weight. Mixing the two conventions is one of the most common ways a home dough ends up badly oversalted.
How do I convert instant yeast to fresh or active dry?
Multiply the instant dry yeast weight by 1.25 for active dry, and by 3 for fresh cake yeast. So 1.8 g of instant becomes 2.3 g of active dry or 5.4 g of fresh. Going the other way, divide. Active dry historically needed rehydrating in warm water first, though most current products no longer do. Instant is the reference on this site because it is the most widely available and the most forgiving.
Does baker’s percentage work with oil and sugar?
Yes, and they join the total percentage like anything else. A New York dough at 63 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt, 0.1 percent yeast, 2 percent oil and 1.5 percent sugar totals 169.1 percent, so a 380 g ball is 224.7 g flour, 141.6 g water, 5.6 g salt, 0.2 g yeast, 4.5 g oil and 3.4 g sugar. Those six figures add back to exactly 380 g.
How we choose: we compare published manufacturer specifications, verified owner reviews, and long-established baker's percentage practice. We do not test gear in person. Dough figures are guidance, not a recipe guarantee: flour, water and room conditions all vary, so read your dough as well as the numbers.
Heat safety: a pizza oven at working temperature holds a 700F to 950F floor and a shell hot enough to burn on contact. Use long-handled peels and heat-rated gloves, keep children and pets clear, burn fuel outdoors only with clearance from anything combustible, and never pour water on a hot baking stone. Water flashes to steam instantly and thermal shock cracks stone.
Keeping your own dough and bake numbers? The Dough & Oven Planner is the paid version of these pages: 8 printable worksheets you fill in with your own numbers, plus the full PDF, $29.