Baker’s percentage calculator · Bake planner

The Baker’s Bench

Build any bread formula in baker’s percentages, scale it to the dough you want, and plan the bake around your day.

Batch

Divide into

Total flour g

Flour

100%

White 86.4%

86.4% rest
%

+ Add a flour

Water (total hydration) %

Slack. Sticky, needs folds for strength — country sourdough, ciabatta.

Salt %

Inside the 1.8–2.2% range most of our five source bakers use.

Leavening

Flour in the levain %

Pre-fermented flour, as a share of all the flour. That’s 200 g of ripe levain — 18.2% of the flour weight, the way many home recipes write it.

Levain hydration %

Enrichments & inclusions

+ Add butter, eggs, milk, seeds…

Formula

Country Sourdough

From the source Chad Robertson, Tartine Bread — Basic Country Bread

Check it against the source

Source batch: 900 g white + 100 g whole wheat, 750 g water (50 g held back for the salt), 200 g leaven (100% hydration, half white/half whole wheat), 20 g salt. Counting the leaven’s 100 g flour and 100 g water gives 1,100 g total flour, 77.27% water and 9.09% pre-fermented flour.

Country sourdough boule with a raised scoring ear, dark crust, and a slice showing open ivory crumb.

Total dough: 1,970 g; 2 × 985 g
Hydration: 77.3%; slack dough
Total flour: 1,100 g; 13.6% whole grain
Levain: 9.1%; pre-fermented flour

The bowl, drawn to scale · % of dough

Into the bowl

Ingredient	Grams
White flour	900 g
Whole wheat flour	100 g
Water	750 g
Ripe levain	200 g
Salt	20 g
Total	1,970 g

The levain already holds 100 g of the flour and 100 g of the water — the other lines are what’s left to add.

Levain build

200 g needed — this builds 10% extra for what sticks to the jar

Your starter

44 gripe starter

44 gwhite flour

44 gwhole wheat flour

88 gwater

220 g100% levain

Ratios are starter : flour : water by weight. Bigger feeds ripen more slowly — see how long yours takes on the Starter Clock.

Water temperature

94°F

for a 78°F dough

Target dough temp Kitchen

Flour same as kitchen

Levain same as kitchen

Mixing friction

King Arthur reports 0–4°F as the range commonly used for gentle hand mixing. Calibrate once from a real dough.

78 × 4 − (kitchen + flour + levain + friction)

Bake planner

Plan it around your day

Steps and times follow Chad Robertson, Tartine Bread — Basic Country Bread.

Loading your plan…

1,970 g dough 77.3% water

Country Sourdough

Chad Robertson, Tartine Bread — Basic Country Bread

2 × 985 g · 1,970 g dough · hydration 77.3% · salt 1.8% · water at 0°F for a 78°F dough

Levain

44 g ripe starter + 44 g white flour + 44 g whole wheat flour + 88 g water = 220 g (1 : 2 : 2)

Final mix

Final mix	Grams	Overall baker’s %
White flour	900 g	86.4%
Whole wheat flour	100 g	13.6%
Water	750 g	77.3%
Ripe levain	200 g
Salt	20 g	1.8%

Schedule

Build the leaven (12h). Feed a mature starter into the leaven the night before. Use it when it smells sweet and ripe, not sour; floating alone does not prove it is ready.
Mix & autolyse (35m). Mix flour, leaven and all but the reserved 50 g of water. Rest without salt.
Add salt (5m). Add the salt with the reserved water — it is part of the listed water, not extra.
Bulk fermentation (3h 30m). Turn the dough about every 30 minutes for the first few hours. Look for an aerated, billowy dough with roughly 20–30% more volume; temperature sets the pace.
Divide & pre-shape (5m). Turn out onto an unfloured bench, divide, and round each piece with a bench knife.
Bench rest (25m). Rest uncovered until the rounds relax.
Final shape (5m). Shape a boule or batard with good surface tension, then into a floured banneton.
Final proof (3h 30m). Proof at room temperature — or retard in the fridge for up to about 12 hours and bake straight from cold.
Bake (45m). Preheat a Dutch oven (if its maker allows) at 500°F, load and drop to 450°F: about 20 minutes covered, then about 20 uncovered to a deep brown.
Cool (3h). Cool on a rack before slicing; the crumb is still setting.

jayarrbread.com/tools/bakers-bench

A baker's percentage calculator that thinks like a baker

Baker's percentages express every ingredient as a share of the total flour, which is always 100%. A dough at 75% hydration has 75 g of water for every 100 g of flour, however big the batch. That's why professional formulas are written this way — and why this calculator lets you edit the percentages directly and scale the grams afterward.

Total hydration includes the levain

The most common sourdough mix-up is hydration. If a recipe adds 200 g of 100%-hydration levain, that levain carries 100 g of flour and 100 g of water. The Bench counts both inside the totals (Hamelman's "overall formula" method), so the hydration you set is the dough's true hydration, and the final mix subtracts what's already in the levain. The Baker's % view shows the whole formula; Final mix shows what actually goes into the bowl.

Three ways to scale

Scale by loaves and dough weight per loaf, by total flour (the way the published formulas are written), or by the ripe levain you actually have — useful when the starter came up short. The levain build card then works backward to how much starter, flour and water to feed, at ratios from 1:1:1 to 1:10:10.

Water temperature and friction

Dough temperature sets fermentation speed. The water-temperature target uses the standard desired-dough-temperature method: target × 3 minus kitchen, flour and friction for a straight dough, or × 4 with a pre-ferment's temperature included. Friction depends on your mixer and mix time, so enter the water and resulting dough temperature from one real batch and the Bench calibrates it for you.

Plan the bake around your day

The planner lays each step of the chosen method on a real clock, starting from when you want to slice or when you can start. Steps that land between 11pm and 6:30am are flagged with a suggested shift. Times start at the middle of each recipe's range; your dough temperature and starter set the real pace, so adjust any step and the rest re-flows. See how long your starter takes to peak on the Starter Clock.

Where the formulas come from

Formulas marked From the source reproduce the published recipe's numbers exactly (the arithmetic is shown under each one); Adapted formulas change one stated thing, such as converting fresh yeast to instant. Templates are neutral starting points, not tested recipes. For flour and yeast details, see the Baker's Shelf; for why a loaf went wrong, the Crumb Lens.