Bakery Scaling & Yield Calculator

What Are Bakers' Percentages?

Bakers' percentages express every ingredient as a ratio of the total flour weight, which is always 100%. A 65% hydration bread means 65 grams of water per 100 grams of flour; 2% salt means 2 grams of salt per 100 grams of flour. The total can exceed 100% — a typical lean dough sums to around 168%. This convention makes scaling trivial: pick any flour weight and every other ingredient follows by ratio.

Why Baking Loss Matters

Dough loses 8–15% of its weight in the oven, almost all as evaporated water. That means a 1 kg dough comes out as ~900 g of bread. If you need 12 finished loaves at 250 g each, you don't need 3 kg of dough — you need closer to 3.4 kg, depending on your loss factor. Working backward from finished weight without accounting for baking loss is the most common source of mis-scaled batches.

Scaling Modes

The tool supports three workflows. Scale by total dough weight when production capacity is the constraint. Scale by unit count and finished-unit weight when retail demand drives the plan — the tool does the baking-loss reverse calculation. Scale by flour on hand when supply is the constraint and you want to use what's in the bin without leaving any behind.

Automating Recipe Management

This calculator handles individual formulas. For recipe libraries synced with scales, POS sales forecasts, and ingredient cost feeds, I build production and recipe systems for bakeries and in-store production departments. See grocery and retail services. Also see the Margin & Markup Calculator for pricing the scaled formula and the Deli Prepared Foods Calculator when bakery items roll into a prepared-foods cost rollup.