Computing Baker's Percentage
For Baking Recipes

Here is how it works...

As a main ingredient in most recipes, flour is always designated as 100%. Each of other ingredients is expressed as a percentage of the total amount of flour.

The following two hypothetical baking recipes will illustrate this point.

Recipe 1

Ingredients	Quantity	Baker’s Percentage
All purpose flour	3 cups	75%
Cake flour	1 cup	25%
Granulated sugar	1 cup	25%
Butter	½ cup	12.50%
Eggs, 2 large	4 oz or ½ cup	12.50%
	Total	150%

Recipe 2

Ingredients	Quantity	Baker’s Percentage
All purpose flour	2 cups	50%
Cake flour	2 cups	50%
Brown sugar	½ cup	12.50%
Honey	¼ cup	6.25%
Butter	¼ cup	6.25%
Egg, 1 large	2 oz or ¼ cup	6.25%
Oil	2 Tbsp or 1oz	3.12%
	Total	134.37%

Please note:

1. When there is more than 1 type of flour, their total percentage must add up to 100%.

2. When baking recipes do not call for flour, the predominant ingredient is designated as 100%.

   For example, in the cookie recipe for gluten free biscotti, the predominant ingredient is unblanched whole almonds.

The following basic conversion units are helpful.

Volumetric measurement

1 cup = 8 oz

1 whole egg = about 2 oz

1 egg white = about 1.25 oz

1 egg yolk = about 0.75 oz

1 Tbsp = 2 oz

With the exception of eggs, butter, oil, milk, and water, weight measurement is not the same as volumetric measurement. In other words, 1 cup of flour may have a volume of 8 oz, but does not necessarily weight 8 oz.

Baker's percentage makes adjusting any baking recipes, either up or down, an easy task. Take hypothetical recipe 1, for example.

Suppose I want to use 3 cups of flours in total instead of 4. I can easily figure out the measurement for other ingredients as follows.

Recipe 1

Ingredients	Baker’s Percentage	Quantity
All purpose flour	75%	2+1/4 cups
Cake flour	25%	3/4 cup
Granulated sugar	25%	3/4 cup
Butter	12.50%	0.375 cup or 3oz
Eggs	12.50%	3oz or
		approximately 1 whole egg and either a yolk or white
Total	150%