Baker's percentage

Baker's percentage is how a shop writes a formula: Wheat flour is 100%, and water, Salt, yeast, and anything else are percentages of that flour weight. King Arthur Baking's professional reference: weigh in one unit, scale the formula, and read the dough at a glance ¹. Calvel's technical breadmaking uses the same arithmetic ².

It is not "percent of the bowl." Salt at 2% means 2% of the flour, not 2% of the dough. King Arthur's white-bread illustration: flour 100%, water 66%, salt 2%, yeast 1.2%. The water line is Hydration ¹.

To hit a dough weight, add the percentages, divide the desired dough weight by that sum (the formula conversion factor), then multiply each percentage. Their French-bread example rounds the factor slightly up so the shop is not short ¹. That scaling move is Dough yield.

Preferments hide the first look #

Treat a Preferment as one ingredient and a Poolish dough can look like 48% water and 3% salt. Overall baker's percent splits that poolish into flour and water — equal weights in King Arthur's example — adds them into the flour and water lines, and recomputes. The same dough becomes 65% water and 2% salt ¹. That recast is how you see Prefermented flour.

Failure #

Volume cups dressed up as baker's math. Preferment flour forgotten when you judge hydration. Copying a percentage onto a different flour without mixing it.

A teaching formula in this language is Country loaf (teaching formula).