How to Use the Calculator

Every bread page has the same calculator. Once you know what each control does, you can scale, tweak, save, and share any recipe in a few seconds. This guide is the annotated tour.

The two modes

The top toggle picks how you specify what you want to make:

• By output— “3 loaves at 400g each” or “6 dough balls at 250g each”. You set the count (with +/-) and the per-piece weight, and the calculator works out the flour you need.
• By dough weight— “I have a 2kg dough goal”. You type the total, and the calculator works backward to flour weight from there. Use this when you’re working from a fixed amount of starter, or when you want to fit a specific pan or container.

Both modes produce the same ingredient table on the right; they’re just two ways of framing the same math. Switching between them preserves the underlying scale — if you set “3 loaves × 400g”, then switch to weight mode, the weight field shows 1200g. They’re linked.

Output kinds

Different breads have different natural output units. The calculator picks the right one automatically:

• Loaves — sandwich breads, brioche, challah, the standard pan loaf.
• Dough balls — pizza, where each ball stretches into one pie.
• Rolls — dinner rolls, bagels, soft pretzels.
• Flatbreads — naan, pita, tortillas.
• Pan — focaccia, Detroit pizza. Scale by pan dimensions (inches × inches) instead of count.

For pan-style breads (focaccia, Detroit pizza), the calculator asks for width and length in inches and computes the dough by pan area. Change either dimension; the total dough updates automatically. A 10×14 pan needs more dough than a 9×9 pan, proportionally.

The ingredient table

The big right-side panel shows every ingredient at its scaled gram weight. Each row has three pieces of information:

• The headline number— the actual weight you’ll measure (e.g., “340g water”).
• The ingredient label— “Water”, “Bread flour”, etc.
• The baker’s percentagein mono font underneath (e.g., “68% baker’s”).

If you’re using ounces, switch via the “Display unit” toggle in the left column. Every weight on the page (calculator, method steps, nutrition) flips to ounces; the percentage stays the same.

Eggs are special

Egg-containing recipes show egg amounts in large eggs by countby default — “2 large eggs ≈ 100g” — because that’s how most home cooks measure them. If you’d rather see grams (precision baking, liquid egg from a carton), switch the Eggs Display toggle in the left column.

If you’ve scaled the recipe small enough that it needs less than half an egg, a warning appears with a one-click button to scale up to the next whole-egg amount. You can ignore the warning (and weigh out a portion of a whisked egg manually), but the default suggestion is to scale up — using a fractional egg cleanly is harder than baking an extra two bagels.

Editing the ratio (the “Customize” section)

Below the ingredient table there’s a collapsible “Edit ratio” panel. Open it to override any ingredient’s percentage from the library default. Each slider has a safe band — the percentages where the recipe will still behave normally — and a wider range outside that band that the math will compute but which produces atypical results.

If you push past the safe range (drop hydration to 50% on a baguette, or push salt to 4%), a warning banner appears at the top of the ingredient table naming the ingredient and the safe band. The recipe will still calculate; the result just won’t behave like the style normally does. The warning is informational, not a hard block.

Use the “Reset to defaults” link below the customize toggle to wipe all overrides and return to the library numbers.

The Gluten-free and Lean toggles

Some breads have a vetted gluten-free adaptation — the wheat recipe has a tested substitution that uses a GF flour blend plus psyllium husk as a binder. When a recipe has one, you’ll see a green “Wheat / Gluten-free” toggle above the calculator. Flipping to gluten-free swaps the entire calculator over: the ingredient list changes, the hydration jumps to the GF formula’s default, and the method steps may swap text where the technique differs (no kneading for GF, etc.).

Some breads also have a calorie-conscious adaptation — the “Standard / Lean” toggle. Flipping to Lean reduces fats (butter, oil) and sugars to their lowest sensible defaults for the style. For brioche this lands on the traditional “brioche commune” (30% butter instead of the rich 50%). For dinner rolls it reduces sugar and oil to a less-sweet, less-rich version. The Lean and GF toggles stack — you can run both at once.

Both toggles persist per-bread to your browser. If you toggle GF on for the brioche page, then leave and come back tomorrow, brioche is still in GF mode. Wheat breads without an adaptation simply hide the toggle.

Saving and sharing

When you have the calculator dialed in for a bake you want to remember, hit the “Save recipe” button. You give it a name (“Tuesday baguettes for the dinner party”) and an optional note. It saves to your browser’s local storage — no account, no signup. Find your saved recipes at /recipeswhenever you want them back. Saves don’t sync across devices, but you can copy a share link (see next).

The “Share this recipe” button copies a URL that encodes your current settings — the output count, the per-piece weight, mode, and the GF toggle state. Paste the link to a friend and they open the calculator at the same scale you had. The URL is human-readable; nothing scary.

On returning visits, a small “Restored from your last visit” badge appears above the calculator when your previous session is loaded. Click “Reset calculator” in that badge to wipe back to the library default for that bread.

The method panel

Below the calculator is the step-by-step method. The percentages and weights in the method text are live — they update as you scale the calculator. If a step says “Whisk 340g water with 2g yeast”, those numbers move when you change the batch size.

Glossary terms in the method are underlined with a dotted line — autolyse, windowpane, levain, fraisage. Hover (desktop) or tap (mobile) for a definition without leaving the page. Keyboard users: tab to a glossary term and the same tooltip opens; press Escape to close.

Some recipes have multiple method variants — same-day vs cold-fermented, with-poolish vs without. The variant chips above the method swap between them; the calculator ingredient panel stays the same (the underlying recipe is one set of percentages), but the timing and procedure adapt.

The print view

Hit Cmd-P / Ctrl-P on any bread page. The print stylesheet hides the navigation, the calculator interactive controls, the ads, and the related-bread footer — and keeps the ingredient list and method as clean ink-friendly typography. What prints is the recipe at your current scale, ready to take into the kitchen without a screen.

The recommended workflow: dial in the calculator, then print. The printed page carries your scale as static text. If you’re scaling down a recipe for a single bagel or a small loaf, the print page shows your reduced grams, not the library defaults.

Where things live

• Settings (top nav → Settings) — global preferences: grams vs ounces, °F vs °C, eggs by count vs weight. These apply across the whole site, not per-bread.
• Saved recipes (top nav → Saved) — your saved bakes, with rename, duplicate, and delete. Saves are device-local.
• FAQ (top nav → Learn → FAQ, also in the footer) — general questions about ratios, hydration, kitchen temperature, data privacy.
• Guides (top nav → Learn → Guides) — the page you’re on. The other guides dig deeper into the concepts; the bread pages put those concepts into practice.