Many recopies give you an exact amount of flour, water and salt. What if recipe calls for 400g of flour and you have only 300 at home. What would you do? A bad way to solve this would be to go out and buy more flour. A good way to solve this is to calculate how much water there should be relative to the flour and calculate how much water there should be in 300g of flour. That is basically the baker’s percentage. Instead of giving exact amounts you specify in percent based on weight of the flour, how much water there should be in the flour. You can do the same with all the ingredients. The amount of water is referred to as hydration.

Fast Facts

• If using more than one type of flour, combined weight counts

Common Percentages

• Pizza Dough : hydration 65%, salt 2%, yeast 0.75%
• Pretzel : 50%, salt 2%