Bread calculator
Bread scaled to the flour you actually have
Pick the bread, say how much flour you're using, and the recipe comes out in grams. Change the percentages freely: the calculator flags anything outside the range the sources give, and tells you what happens if you push past it.
| Ingredient | Amount | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| White wheat flour | 500.0 g | 100% |
| Water | 300.0 g | |
| Lard | 20.0 g | |
| Sugar | 7.0 g | |
| Instant yeast | 5.0 g | |
| Salt | 10.0 g | |
| Total flour | 500.0 g | 100% |
| Total dough | 842.0 g |
Percentages are editable and the recipe updates as you type. Flour is not: it is the 100% the rest is measured against, so change the batch by weight, above.
Dough balance
Hydration
Recommended range: 60% – 70%
Camargo, cap. 1, "Dúvidas frequentes" · Kayser, p. 20Salt
Recommended range: 1.5% – 2.2%
Kayser, p. 48 · Camargo, cap. 4, "Massa de pizza ao estilo napoletano"Sugar
Recommended range: 0% – 12%
Camargo, cap. 3, "Pão de leite" · Kayser, p. 260Instant yeast
Recommended range: 0.3% – 1%
Camargo, cap. 1, "Sobre o fermento", cap. 4, "Massa de pizza ao estilo napoletano"Method, as the source gives it
- First rise
- 60 min
- Second rise
- 70 min
- Bake time
- 20–25 min
- Yield in the source
- 10 units of 85 g
Yeast converter
Got fresh yeast and a recipe asking for dry? Convert it here.
Use5.0 gInstant yeast
Yeast and time pull in opposite directions
Halving the yeast doubles the first rise. Treat it as planning guidance: kitchen temperature and flour strength both move the result.
Switching to levain
There is no conversion factor between commercial yeast and levain: levain works as a dose of the flour weight, 20 to 50%. Since it is half flour and half water, take both out of the recipe.
- Liquid levain
- 100.0 g
- Subtract from flour
- − 50.0 g
- Subtract from water
- − 50.0 g
- If your levain is dried
- 25.0 g
How the calculation works
The whole calculator runs on baker's percentage: flour is 100% and every other ingredient is a percentage of its weight. That is why the same recipe serves 300 g or 3 kg of flour. The proportions hold, only the scale changes.
When a pre-ferment is involved the arithmetic gains a wrinkle. Liquid levain is half flour and half water, so 20% levain adds ten points of flour and ten of water to the totals. Ignoring that understates the hydration: Kayser’s boule declares 70% water, but the dough actually works at 73%. The calculator shows both numbers.
The same goes for salt. Ciabatta’s 2% is measured against the dough’s flour; count the flour that arrived inside the poolish and the real figure is 1.7%. The first number is what you weigh, the second is what explains the fermentation.
Where the sources disagree
The three sources behind this calculator do not agree on everything, which is normal. Wherever a choice had to be made, it is spelled out here.
| Topic | What each source says | What the calculator does |
|---|---|---|
| White bread hydration | Kayser works at 70% in the boule; Camargo uses 60% for pão francês; the course notes record about 50%. | A 60–70% range, with 65% as the reference. The 50% figure describes machine-kneaded bakery dough with a tight crumb: a legitimate lower bound, not a default. Kayser works with levain and a steamed oven, which supports the 70%. |
| Fresh to dry yeast | Kayser says divide by 2; Camargo says divide by 3. | Both, because they are different yeasts: active dry is half the fresh weight, instant is a third. It is not a contradiction, it is vocabulary. |
| Pizza hydration | Kayser’s home recipe prints 52%, but the conversion table in the same book (p. 301) gives 68%. Camargo uses 65%, with a 59–70% range. | The preset sits at 62%. The 52% is out of step with everything, including the rest of that same book, so we treat it as an editing slip. |
| How much yeast | Kayser uses 0.4–1.4% fresh yeast alongside a levain; Camargo puts a 1% ceiling on instant yeast. | The range follows the yeast you pick, and the 1% instant ceiling becomes a warning. Kayser’s figures are not directly comparable: in his method the levain is the engine. |
Glossary
- Baker's percentage
- A system where flour is 100% and every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of its weight. It lets you rescale a recipe without redoing the arithmetic.
- Hydration
- The ratio of water to flour in a recipe.
- Autolyse
- A rest between mixing and kneading that lets the flour absorb the water and the gluten start forming on its own. More elastic dough, less work.
- Levain
- Natural starter: a culture of wild yeasts and lactic bacteria. The liquid kind runs at 100% hydration (equal parts flour and water); the firm kind at about 60%.
- Poolish
- A liquid pre-ferment of equal parts flour and water with a trace of yeast, no salt and no kneading. It builds flavour before the dough exists.
- Biga
- A pre-ferment with the same job as poolish, but firm.
- Old dough
- A piece of finished dough from the day before folded into the new one, at 15 to 30% of the flour weight.
- Pointage and apprêt
- The two fermentations: the first in bulk, straight after kneading; the second after shaping, up to the oven.
- Base temperature
- The sum of the room, flour and water temperatures, used to work out how warm the water should be. For white bread it sits between 54 and 56 °C, aiming at dough at 24–25 °C off the mixer.
- Flour strength
- Strong flour has more protein, absorbs more water and stands up to long fermentation. Protein quality matters more than the headline percentage.
Sources for this calculator
Every preset and every range above comes from one of these works, at the page or chapter given.
The Larousse Book of Bread
Kayser · Phaidon
p. 48 · p. 54 · p. 112 · p. 124 · p. 228 · p. 301 · p. 260 · p. 242 · p. 20 · p. 16 · p. 24 · p. 26
Direto ao Pão
Camargo · Senac São Paulo
cap. 3, "Pão francês" · cap. 3, "Pão integral" · cap. 4, "Pão tipo ciabatta" · cap. 4, "Massa de pizza ao estilo napoletano" · cap. 3, "Pão para sanduíche" · cap. 3, "Pão de hambúrguer" · cap. 3, "Pão de hot-dog" · cap. 3, "Pão de leite" · cap. 3, "Broa à portuguesa" · cap. 1, "Dúvidas frequentes" · cap. 1, "Sobre o fermento" · cap. 1, "Planejando as fornadas"