You don’t need to calculate the hydration rate or your dough to make amazing bread at home, you can completely do it without knowing any of the calculations below but if you’re mathematically minded, if calculations bring you joy, if this is an area that you are curious about then here are the Hydration Calculations in one easy place.
Basic Hydration Calculation
This is the most straight forward calculation which will reward you with the water content of your recipe in relation to the amount of flour as a percentage.
(Water (g) / Flour (g)) x 100 = Hydration Percentage
For example, here are the ingredients from your Simple Loaf Recipe:
640g Room temperature water
24g Fresh yeast or 14g dry yeast
1000g Strong white bread flour
16g Salt
30g Olive Oil
And here is the hydration calculation:
(640 Water / 1000 Flour) x 100 = 64
The hydration is 64%
Sourdough Hydration
For sourdough things are a little different because within the recipe there will always be a proportion of starter to be accounted for. All you need to do here is break down your starter into flour and water quantities and add them to the flour and water in the recipe to make sure you are calculating the hydration of the entirety of the recipe. The formula then remains the same.
For example, here are the ingredients from your Sourdough Loaf for Beginners Recipe:
100g Excited sourdough starter
450g Strong white bread flour
310g Room temperature water
8g Salt
First you divide the starter into it’s components. Mine is always half flour and half water:
50g Flour
50g Water
Then add those quantities to the rest of the ingredients in the recipe to get the totals:
450 + 50 = 500g Flour
310 + 50 = 360g Water
And then continue your calculation:
(360 Water / 500 Flour) x 100 = 72
The hydration is 72%
Calculating Hydration Backwards
In this case you might have a specific hydration that you’d like to aim for, say 68%. You know how much flour you want to use, and you need to know how much water you need to arrive at that particular hydration. Here’s what you do:
(Desired Hydration / 100) x Flour (g) = Water Quantity (g)
So then, for example if you’re making two loaves you’ll likely need 1000g of flour, and if you’re aiming for 68% Hydration the calculation would look like this:
(68 / 100) x 1000 = 680
You’ll need 680g or water to reach your desired hydration of 68%
Hope that makes sense, I thought it might be handy to have these all on one page for you for your reference!