Bread,
by the numbers.

Baker's percentage is the way professional bakeries write recipes. Instead of fixed cups or grams, every ingredient is given as a percentage of the total flour weight. Flour is always 100%. If a dough is 68% hydration, that means the water weighs 68% of the flour. Salt at 2% means the salt weighs 2% of the flour. The percentages describe the relationship between ingredients, not a batch size, which is why the same set of numbers works whether you are making one loaf or twenty.

Here is a worked example. Take a baguette dough at 68% hydration and 2% salt with a touch of yeast. Start with 1000 g of flour. The water is 68% of that, so 680 g. The salt is 2%, so 20 g. Want a smaller batch? Drop the flour to 500 g and every other number halves with it: 340 g water, 10 g salt. The dough behaves identically because the ratio never changed — only the scale did. That is the whole idea, and once it clicks you stop hunting for a recipe that happens to match your pan.

This is why ratios beat fixed recipes. A printed recipe gives you exactly two loaves, or one 9×13 pan, and leaves you doing fraction math in your head when you want three loaves or a half batch. A ratio scales cleanly in either direction. You can start from what you have (“I've got 750 g of dough, what goes in it?”) or from what you want (“I need four pizza balls at 250 g each”) and the math falls out the same way. It also makes substitutions honest: bump hydration by five points and you know exactly how much more water that is.

Using the calculators is four steps. Pick a recipe from the library. Set how much you want — by loaf or roll count, by pan size, or by total dough weight. Read the ingredient weights in grams (or ounces, if you switch units). Then follow the method on the recipe page, which walks through mixing, proofing, shaping, and baking with the timing for that style. Every percentage is editable within a safe range, so an experienced baker can push the hydration and a beginner can leave the vetted defaults alone.

The defaults are not guesses. Each ratio is cross-checked against trusted sources — Hamelman, Forkish, King Arthur, Reinhart — and adapted for home ovens, so a first attempt lands in known-good territory. Beyond the calculators, the site is a reference: long-form baking guides on hydration, scoring, steam, and why a loaf didn't rise; a glossary that defines autolyse, levain, fraisage, and the rest in plain English; and an FAQ covering ingredients, substitutions, and dietary questions like whether yeast is vegan.