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Dough Hydration Calculator

Find your dough's hydration percentage.

How it is calculated

Hydration is water weight as a percentage of flour weight: hydration % = water ÷ flour × 100. Both flour and water are weights in grams. Use the same unit for both, since only the ratio matters. Flour must be greater than zero and water cannot be negative, otherwise no result is shown. The tool also reports the combined flour plus water weight in grams. Starter, salt, oil, milk or eggs are not counted unless you add their water or flour share yourself. Water is always compared with flour alone, never with the total dough.

Worked example

A recipe uses 500 g of flour and 350 g of water. Divide 350 by 500 to get 0.7, then multiply by 100: the hydration is 70.00%. Flour plus water comes to 850 g. To raise the dough to 75% hydration with the same flour, you would need 500 × 0.75 = 375 g of water, so 25 g more.

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Common mistakes

  • Dividing water by the total dough weight (850 g) instead of by the flour weight. That would give 41%, which is not a baker's percentage.
  • Forgetting that a sourdough starter contains flour and water. A 100% starter adds equal parts of each, so leaving it out understates both numbers.
  • Mixing units, for example flour in grams and water in millilitres from a measuring cup, or cups for one and grams for the other.
  • Counting milk, eggs or butter as pure water. They are only partly water, so the true hydration is a little lower than a naive sum suggests.
  • Adding extra water later without updating the figure, so the recipe's stated hydration no longer matches the dough.

About this calculator

This calculator computes baker's percentage hydration — the water weight divided by the flour weight, times 100 — the standard way bakers express how wet a dough is, always relative to flour weight (set at 100%) rather than total dough weight. A lean sandwich loaf typically sits around 60–65% hydration, a rustic artisan or ciabatta loaf runs 75–85%, and very wet no-knead or focaccia doughs can exceed 90%.

Home bakers and professional bread bakers use hydration percentage to compare recipes, scale a formula up or down while keeping its character, and troubleshoot dough that's too stiff or too slack, since hydration directly affects crumb openness, crust chewiness, and how easy the dough is to shape.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    Hydration only tells you how much water is in the dough, not how wet it feels. Whole-wheat and other high-extraction flours absorb more water, so the same 70% usually feels stiffer than with white flour, and many bakers raise the figure a few points when they switch. Treat the result as a starting point and adjust by feel. Which flour are you baking with, and what hydration finally gave you the crumb you wanted?

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