Many of us are intimidated by the big words we find in sourdough recipes and in the “shop talk” we hear from bakers.
I am committed to guiding you (see what I did there?) so you can better understand what is happening.
Simply put: Hydration refers to the ratio of flour and water (or other liquids, like beer, milk, juice…).
Example: The starter we use in most recipes has equal amounts of water and flour. The result is a 100% hydration starter.
As a reference, I built this calculator
Sourdough Bread Hydration Calculator
You simply add up all the flour you are adding to the bread and slide the slider for the water. The calculator will give you the hydration level of your dough.
The hydration of your dough influences the outcome. Some breads typically have a higher hydration, like baguette for example. Others, like sandwich loaves, have a lower hydration.
There is no right or wrong in this, but there are advantages and reasons for the different hydration levels:
Lower hydration <80%
The dough is easier to handle, especially for beginner bakers
A more even and closed crumb allows for easier spreading of toppings.
This bread can feel heavier
Lower oven-spring means that the loaves don’t rise as high
Higher hydration >80%
High-hydration dough needs more experience to handle
Bigger alveoli (holes) produce a more “airy” bread
Some say the bread feels moister
More and larger alveoli mean that the loaves rise higher in the oven
Bakers Math
Sometimes you will come across terms like “bakers math” or “Bakers percentage”.
While this sounds very mysterious it is a way for us to communicate a bread recipe in simple percentages. If you read bread recipes and you use regular math, you will notice, that the result is more than 100% 😮 .
This is because bakers list percentages in relation to the amount of flour.
If you are even more confused now, let me explain why we do this:
- You can scale up any bread recipe by using the listed percentages.
- You can predict the bread’s behaviour, crumb structure, how difficult it will be to handle, rise times….
- Quickly communicate the basics of your recipe.
The percentages of all ingredients are expressed in relation to the weight of the flour used. This is another reason bakers use a scale rather than cup measurements.
Let’s use an example:
My basic bread recipe uses 500 grams of flour per loaf at 72% hydration. We want to make three loaves:
1 loaf
Flour 500 g (100 g Spelt, 150 g whole wheat, 250 g white)
Water 360 g
60 g starter (100% hydration)
3 loaves
Flour 1500 g
Water 1,080 g
180 g starter
You can imagine that this can get complicated if you bake more than just 3x the basic recipe.
You can also use my calculator:
Learn more
If you want to dive deeper into this topic, I recommend this article by Bake & Basil
