Most of the time, when I bake bread, I don’t look at a recipe.
Sure, I read a lot of books about bread and gather ideas from them, but more often than not, when it’s time to make the bread, it’s just me, my scale and a few numbers in my head.
I think about the previous breads I made, what worked last time with the specific mix of flours I am about to use. On a small slip of paper, or — more and more often these days — in a file in BreadStorm, I write down the proportions of ingredients as I decide what to do with them in the bread I am making today. And then, I start weighing ingredients.
This is possible because all breads are related.
Start with any bread recipe and strip away all ingredients that aren’t strictly necessary and soon you’ll notice that you are left with just four basic ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast (or leaven). Similarly, working from the other direction, you can start with those ingredients, varying their proportions and maybe adding one or two extra ingredients (fats, seeds, nuts, maybe some sweeteners…) and get to almost any type of bread.
But how does all this work?
Luckily, it’s not hard at all.
It all comes down to just a few basic variables and then a lot of testing to find out the values that give YOU the best results when using your ingredients. Understand those variables and you can be the chief scientist in your kitchen — and start experimenting.
The Formula
As I already mentioned, to make great bread, all you need is four ingredients (three actually, but we’ll get to that later): flour, water, leaven, and salt. Change the amount of salt too much and your bread is no longer edible, so most of the time we just play with the proportions between water and flour.
Let’s start with an example: the most basic bread recipe of them all. To make the math as easy as possible, I am using 1000 grams of flour.
- 1000g bread flour
- 700g water
- 10g fresh yeast
- 20g salt
There you go. The most basic of bread formulas, a formula that already leads to a decent loaf of bread. Replace the yeast with some sourdough starter, or a pre-ferment, and you have great bread.
But now, the “magic”: By replacing the weights by numbers known as bakers’ percentage this formula becomes not just one formula, but the root for all formulas.
Here’s the same formula from above, this time written using bakers’ percentages instead of weights:
- 100% bread flour
- 70% water
- 1% fresh yeast
- 2% salt
See the logic yet?
Let me explain it: when using the bakers’ percentage notation, every ingredient is presented as its proportion compared to the total amount of flour in the dough.
This is important so I’ll repeat: a bakers’ percentage is not your regular percentage. It’s a number that tells how much of any ingredient is present in the dough, in relation to the amount of flour.
Now, the math.
Here’s how I got from these percentages to the final formula: I first decided to use 1000g of flour. This means that 100% = 1000g. Had I used two different flours, they would together be 100% (for example 20% wholemeal flour and 80% bread flour).
Next, we can calculate the other ingredients:
- 70% of 1000g is 700g (in math speak: 1000 * 0.7 = 700)
- 2% of 1000g is 20g (1000 * 0.02 = 20)
- 1% of 1000g is 10g (1000 * 0.01 = 10)
And that’s it!
We now have used the formula to create a basic bread recipe for a kilo of white flour. In the same way, if you wanted to use 500 grams of flour, you’d just use 350 grams of water (500 * 0.7), 10 grams of salt (500 * 0.02) and 5 grams yeast (500 * 0.01).
This is how the bakers’ percentage notation combines all these different recipes into one. But this gets even more exciting!
So, let’s look at one more term: the hydration level.
Hydration simply means the amount of water in a dough, and is presented in bakers’ percentage.
In our example, the hydration is 70%, which — depending on the flour you use — can be just right or a little on the wet side.
I feel I should write more about this, but this really is it: Hydration means the amount of water in a dough.
Now, using these two tools (bakers’ percentage and hydration level), we can describe the formula in just two numbers. Two numbers that you can store in your mind and use to bake bread without ever looking at another recipe again:
Formula for basic white loaf (simplified version):
70% hydration. 2% salt. 1% yeast.
And as you bake more, the 2% for salt and 1% yeast become second nature, and then you can just go with the one number: 70% hydration.
You will be saying things like: “Today, I made bread at 80% hydration. Using 20% wholemeal wheat.”
And when another baker says his 100% hydration Ciabatta was a success, you’ll know exactly what he means.
For me, learning this a few years back was eye-opening, and now whenever I come across a bread recipe without bakers’ percentages written down, the first thing I do is to calculate them so that I can understand the dough and relate it in my mind with all the different breads I have baked previously.
So, I say if you have been avoiding these concepts because of the math involved, give them a go. At first, it might feel like work, but very soon, you will start seeing the benefits.
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This was very helpful. Your simplified explanations clarified everything for me. Thank you!
Awesome! I’m happy it worked 🙂 Thank you for the comment!
So, in your hydration example above, does the remaining 80% come from bread flour?
Ah, I’m sorry for the vague example!
But you’re exactly right. So, the actual formula would be:
20% wholemeal flour
80% bread flour
80% water
2% salt
1% fresh yeast
(or maybe 20% or so of sourdough instead of yeast)
Thank you for the clarification!
So to clarify, if I have 150g of ripe Sourdough starter with 100% hydration do I add that amount of flour and water less when I am totaling my flour and water for the mix? To rephrase is my total flour and water for the mix incorporating what I would add for my SD starter? Thanks!
Am finding out that not everyone takes into account, the flour and water in the levain in their final dough %ages. Seeing as how the hydration level in levains could be anything from 50% to a 150%,
I´m having a hard time calculating this in my formulas. Is there any easier way?
Thanks for this great blog btw!!
Thanks for your comment, Raj,
Yes, you’re right: as the amount of leaven in the final dough increases, its hydration becomes more and more important for the final hydration.
If you always use a starter at the same hydration and roughly the same amount of it, I find it easy to just think of the formula without taking the starter into account. For more detailed formula development, you can use software like BreadStorm (if you are on a Mac) or a spreadsheet 🙂
One thing I’ve been thinking about… I wonder if adding a web based tool like this to our web site would be something bakers would like to see?
First Thank you for all your kindness and time to make clear You are a Wounderful Mentor.
About the question for adding to the Web site something like I will appreciate because not everyone have a money to enroll in the Bread Storn is like $ 147.00 I believe.
I hope you Understand my few words because English is my SL .I ‘m apologize for any miss understanding. Sincerely Pilar Anderson
Thank you, Pilar! I know, BreadStorm is a great tool but it’s got some limitations: price is one, as is the fact that it’s only available on a Mac…
Keep an eye on our blog / newsletter… If we decide to move forward with a project like this, we’ll definitely let you know 🙂
Happy baking!
hi, thanks. how would adding some other items like nuts and seeds to this bread affect the calculation?
Hi Jack! That’s a good question.
Usually, the extra ingredients such as nuts are added in addition to the other ingredients and don’t affect these calculations. For example, you could add 10% walnuts to the formula in this article — for 1000 g flour, that would be 100 grams of walnuts.
I hope this helps!
Great Post.
The brown breads or the whole wheat breads which we get in store, contains whole wheat flour and some proportion of either Soy or All purpose flour. So to make 100% how much % should be Whole wheat and how much % should be Soy/All purpose? Also what’s the hydration level when we bake a whole wheat bread.
Also if we choose to use only whole wheat flour and none other, will there be any change in hydration level? Also does professional bakers consider using only Whole Wheat flour.
Many Thanks
This is very helpful!
How do you handle hydration percentages if there is liquid from eggs, fruit, or beer in the recipe? (Other than “know that it will be wetter…”)
My sourdough has Rye, all purpose and whole wheat flours PLUS Corn meal, oats, wheat germ. How do I calculate hydration will all this? Total weight (dry is 22.75 oz and wet is 16.25 oz? or add more water for the non-flour things? My dough is very sticky and bread is dry & crumbly but tastes fabulous.
Please help.
I need recipe for 50kg bakers flour to inprove the guality of my product
Thank you SO much for this. It is very helpful….but I wonder too…I use different flours (Spelt, Quinoa, Amaranth, Einkhorn) as well as seeds in my multi seed multi grain bread. How do I figure those in….are they part of that total 100% and how do I add Honey and butter? I love your Bread magazine too! Thank you!
Thank You! I was looking for a quick and concise guide with starting ratio to play with. I don’t usually comment on stuff, but I really found this helpful.