Baker’s Percentage

Baker’s math – what for. That is a question that is being asked a number of times. The answer to this is actually quite easy.

Every recipe has a number of ingredients with a certain amount of each item to be used. This could be expressed in weight, volume or even number of items. The amounts are calculated based on the resulting volume which will make it a little hard to convert the recipe in a correct manner if you need more or less than what the recipe is aiming for.

When you bake bread, it’s not just that simple because you need to adjust the volumes of all the ingredients and is not based on the final result you want alone. You need to adjust your recipe based on the main ingredient – the flour.

Here is the baker’s percentage formula

Once you have that percent value you adjust all the ingredients based on that – the result is a perfectly adjusted recipe.

You can use this formula on any baking recipe you have by applying it the to main ingredient of the recipe. Not sure where to start? We have prepared an Excel that has the formula applied to an example. You can use it to start re-calculating the bread recipes you have.