Tools for bread bakers

Over time this page will be populated with a variety of different tools and calculators which home bakers may find useful. But as it stands today, only one calculator is available here.

Sourdough calculator

This calculator will help you determine how many ingredients you need if you wish to bulk up your sourdough, change its hydration or change flour to starter ratio for a feeding.

To bulk up sourdough to a desired weight, change Output weight accordingly and play with Flour ratio value to match the amount of starter you have. For example, if you have 30g of starter but need 280g for your recipe, type 280 into Output weight field and change Flour ratio to 10. You will see that with 10:1 ratio you will only need 25.45g of starter, but with 8:1 ratio you will need 31.11g.

If you need to change hydration of your sourdough, set Starter hydration and Final hydration accordingly.

If you wish to change your usual feeding ratio to speed it up or slow it down, adjust Flour ratio. The higher the ratio, the slower your starter will digest new food. For example, at 2:1 ratio a starter should fully mature in about 5-6 hours. At 10:1 this process will take 12 or more hours.

Flour ratio is based on baker's percents. Home bakers with 100% hydration starters usually use three component ratios like 1:1:1 or 1:5:5 where first number is the amount of starter, second number is the amount of fresh flour and third - the amount of water. But such ratios only work for 100% hydration starters. Thus using baker's percents is a better way to describe feeding regime.

Two component ratios using baker's percents indicate how much fresh flour is taken against the amount of flour in starter. For example, 2:1 means that twice the amount of fresh flour is added and it is the same as 1:1:1 in 100% hydration case.