Bread Dough Hydration Calculator

What Is Dough Hydration?

Hydration is a baker's percentage: the weight of water in a dough expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, with flour always treated as 100%. A dough with 500g of flour and 350g of water is at 70% hydration (350 ÷ 500). Lower hydration (55-65%) gives a firmer, easier-to-shape dough typical of sandwich bread and bagels; higher hydration (75%+) gives a wetter, stickier dough associated with open, airy crumb structures like ciabatta or artisan sourdough.

How to Use This Calculator

Choose whether you want to find the water weight for a target hydration (the common case when starting a new dough from a flour amount) or check the hydration percentage of a recipe you already have flour and water amounts for. Enter the numbers you know, and the calculator fills in the rest.

How We Calculate It

Water weight = flour weight × (hydration % ÷ 100). Hydration % = (water weight ÷ flour weight) × 100. Both are the same relationship rearranged for whichever value you're solving for.

A Few Notes

This calculator covers the flour-and-water relationship only — it doesn't account for other liquid ingredients like eggs, milk, or oil, which some bakers also fold into an "effective hydration" figure. Flour type matters too: whole wheat and rye typically absorb more water than white bread flour, so the same hydration percentage can feel very different in the mixing bowl depending on what flour you're using.