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Get the added water for a 75% hydration target, with the starter split into its own flour and water. Current hydration and totals stay visible.

📘 How to Use

  1. Enter the flour, water, and starter weights in grams
  2. Set your starter hydration and target hydration as percentages
  3. Read your current hydration and the water adjustment needed to hit the target

Sourdough Hydration Calculator

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※ Hydration = total water / total flour x 100. Flour in starter = starter weight / (1 + starter hydration / 100).

Current hydration
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Water adjustment
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Total water
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Total flour
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Total dough
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These figures are a formulation guideline. The ideal hydration shifts with flour absorption, room temperature, and fermentation, so adjust by feel against the real dough.

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Article

Sourdough Hydration Calculator｜True Hydration With the Starter Counted

Work out your dough's real hydration from the flour, water, and starter weights. Instead of treating the starter as one lump, this tool splits it into its own flour and water using the starter's hydration, then adds those back into the totals — the technically correct baker's-percentage approach. It also shows how much water to add or remove to land on your target.

💡 About this tool

Hydration is just total water divided by total flour, times 100. The catch with sourdough is that the starter is itself flour plus water, so if you calculate using only the recipe flour and water you get a number that drifts from reality. Ignoring the starter in the math is the single most common mistake bakers make: the dough ends up slacker or stiffer than the percentage suggested.

This calculator splits the starter using its hydration. A 100% starter (equal parts flour and water, the most common build) splits 50/50 — so 100g of it counts as 50g flour and 50g water. With the starter folded into the totals, you see your true hydration and the exact water adjustment to reach the target you set.

🧐 Frequently Asked Questions

Should the starter be included in the hydration calculation? Yes — that is the accurate baker's-percentage method. Add the flour and water inside the starter to the total flour and total water before dividing. The larger your starter percentage, the more a "starter-ignored" number drifts from the truth.

What if I don't know my starter's hydration? If you feed it equal weights of flour and water, it's 100%. A stiffer starter (say 2 parts flour to 1 part water) sits around 50%. You can back it out from the flour-to-water ratio you used when feeding.

What target hydration should I pick? It depends on how the dough handles. For your first few loaves, 70–72% is forgiving; once you're comfortable shaping, push toward 75–78% for a more open crumb. The tool defaults to 75%.

How does whole wheat change the hydration? Whole wheat and rye absorb more water, so swapping them into a white-flour recipe at the same hydration leaves the dough feeling dry. Bumping hydration by a few percent usually rebalances it.

Why does the water adjustment show a negative number? That means you're already above the target. Removing the shown amount of water brings the dough back down to your target hydration.

📚 Why bakers obsess over that one number

Hydration is the lever that controls crumb: low hydration gives a tight, sandwich-style structure, while high hydration (78%+) trends toward the big, open holes people chase in a "proper" sourdough — at the cost of trickier shaping. A frequent home-baker failure is panic-adding water mid-bulk because the dough "looks dry," which wrecks the structure already built. A more reliable habit is to lock the formula first, including the starter's share, then trust the folds and let the dough loosen on its own during fermentation. Knowing the true number going in is what makes a deliberate adjustment next bake possible, rather than guessing at the bench.