A baker’s percentage expresses an ingredient’s mass as a percentage of the flour mass. The flour base is 100%. Other ingredients are measured against that base, so the percentages do not need to add up to 100%.
This gives you a compact way to describe a formula and resize it. The important first step is to identify all the flour that belongs in the base.
Start with all the flour
If a formula uses 400 g of bread flour and 100 g of whole wheat flour, the flour base is 500 g. Each flour can keep its own row, but the denominator for the other percentages is their combined mass.
This is an explicit classification, not a guess based on the ingredient name. Mark the rows that count as flour in your formula. Keep other powders on their own rows unless you intentionally define them as part of that base. The tool should show the choice so you can review it.
Divide each ingredient by total flour
For a 500 g flour base, 350 g of water gives 350 ÷ 500 × 100 = 70%. A 10 g salt quantity gives 10 ÷ 500 × 100 = 2%. The two flour rows represent 80% and 20% of the same base.
These are mass ratios. A volume quantity must first have a supported mass relationship, or you need to enter its mass yourself. A cup value with an unresolved reference cannot become an exact percentage merely because the table needs a number.
| Ingredient | Mass | Percentage of total flour |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 400 g | 80% |
| Whole wheat flour | 100 g | 20% |
| Water | 350 g | 70% |
| Salt | 10 g | 2% |
| Total dough | 860 g | 172% |
Why the total is above 100%
The flour alone occupies the 100% baseline. Adding water and salt adds further percentages of that baseline. In the example, the total is 100% flour + 70% water + 2% salt, or 172%. That is not an error and does not describe the percentage composition of the whole dough.
If you instead ask what share of the total dough is flour, you are asking a different question: 500 ÷ 860. Keep the denominator visible so a percentage is not interpreted in the wrong way.
Resize to a target dough weight
To make 1,720 g of the example formula, divide the target dough weight by the total ratio of 1.72. The flour base becomes 1,000 g. The ingredient percentages then give 800 g of bread flour, 200 g of whole wheat flour, 700 g of water, and 20 g of salt.
The weights add back to the requested total. This reverse check is useful whenever you resize a formula. Keep the calculated values at full precision underneath the display so rounded rows do not become the starting point for another resize.
Account for starter separately
If the formula contains a starter with a declared hydration, its flour belongs in total flour and its water belongs in total water. Do not add the entire starter mass to either one. Its components need to be separated before you calculate overall percentages.
Other ingredients are not silently split into water and solids. A known mass of milk, honey, or butter is not the same as a known mass of water. Keep the tool’s water calculation limited to quantities identified as water and the declared water in starter, unless you have explicitly supplied another supported relationship.
Use the formula for quantities, not timing
A percentage table describes numerical proportions. It does not predict fermentation time, dough temperature, or the result of a substitution. Keep the original method and any relevant notes with the formula.
Before exporting, check the flour-base markers, the starter inputs, and the total weight. A good table lets you trace each percentage to the mass and denominator that produced it.