Baker's percentages — grams to percent and back
Baker’s percentages are how dough people talk: every ingredient as a percent of the flour, so a recipe scales to any batch and any two doughs can be compared at a glance. Run it in either direction — turn a formula into weights, or weigh what a recipe gave you and see what it really is.
Which way?
Flour is always 100% — everything else is measured against it. Yeast is the one number that isn’t really a constant: its right dose comes from your hours and temperature, which the calculator works out for you.
Flour is the yardstick
In baker’s math the flour is always 100%, and everything else is measured against it. Take the Neapolitan preset: 62% water and 2.8% salt. On 500 g of flour that’s 310 g of water and 14 g of salt; on a kilo, double both — the formula never changes, only the flour does.
That’s the whole trick. A recipe written in grams feeds one batch size; a recipe written in percentages feeds any. It also makes recipes honest — “a splash of water” hides, but 80% hydration tells you exactly what kind of evening you’re in for.
Every style, as a formula
These are the presets behind the calculator’s ten styles — the same numbers the style pages quote, read from the same model.
| Style | Water | Salt | Oil | Sugar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neapolitan | 62% | 2.8% | — | — |
| New York | 63% | 2.5% | 2.5% | 1.5% |
| Roman teglia | 78% | 2.2% | 2% | — |
| Sicilian | 70% | 2.2% | 3% | 1% |
| Detroit | 70% | 2.2% | 2% | 1% |
| Thin & crispy | 56% | 2.5% | 2.5% | — |
| Focaccia | 80% | 2.2% | 4% | — |
| Pinsa | 80% | 2.4% | 2% | — |
| Grandma | 65% | 2.2% | 3% | — |
| Tavern | 52% | 2% | 3% | 1% |
Two patterns worth noticing: wetter doughs are pan doughs (the pan holds what your hands can’t), and salt sits in a narrow band around 2–3% no matter the style — taste is less negotiable than texture. What each column actually does to the dough is the salt, oil & sugar guide’s story.
Questions from the counter
Why do my percentages add up to more than 100%?
Because they aren’t shares of a whole — they’re measurements against the flour. A 62% hydration dough is 100% flour + 62% water + the rest, happily summing past 160. The total just tells you how much dough a given flour weight yields.
What hydration is pizza dough?
Anywhere from 52% (Tavern, rolled cracker-thin) to 80% (Focaccia, poured into its pan). Most round pizzas live in the low-to-mid 60s. The hydration guide maps the whole range.
How do I scale a recipe up or down?
Change the flour, keep the percentages — that’s the entire point of the system. Switch the tool to “% → grams”, type the new flour weight, and the recipe re-weighs itself.
Does sourdough starter count as flour or water?
Both. A 100%-hydration starter is half flour, half water, so a real dose shifts your true hydration. The sourdough guide shows the bookkeeping, and the calculator’s sourdough mode does it automatically.
From formula to Friday night
The calculator speaks baker’s percent natively — pick a style, slide the percentages in Pro mode, and it weighs the batch, doses the yeast from your schedule and writes the timeline.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!
Impasto is a free pizza dough calculator for Neapolitan, New York, Roman, Sicilian, Detroit, thin crust and focaccia doughs — flour, water, salt and yeast weighed in baker's percentages, with the fermentation schedule written for you.