Scale a bread recipe without changing hydration
Scale flour and water together, check baker’s percentages, and keep ingredient weights separate from volume measures.
Method
Start with ingredient weights in one unit. Hydration is water weight divided by flour weight, multiplied by 100. To keep that ratio when changing batch size, multiply every ingredient by the same scale factor. The factor is target flour divided by original flour, or target servings divided by original servings when the portion size stays the same. Scaling only the water changes the recipe rather than just its size.
Worked example
A dough with 500 G flour and 350 G water has 70% hydration. For 750 G flour, the scale factor is 750 ÷ 500 = 1.5. Water becomes 350 × 1.5 = 525 G, and 525 ÷ 750 × 100 still equals 70%. If the original salt weight is 10 G, scale it to 15 G. Flour and water together weigh 1,275 G before other ingredients are added.
What to check
Use Dough hydration to check the ratio and Recipe scaler for each ingredient. Enter flour and water contained in a starter as part of the totals when you know those amounts. Do not treat oil weight as water. A weight-based calculation does not convert cups of different ingredients into equal masses; weigh them first. The ratio alone does not set mixing, proofing or baking time, so keep those instructions under review when changing the batch.