Sourdough Hydration Guide
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Hydration is one of those sourdough terms that sounds technical but becomes simple once you see it in action. Put plainly, hydration describes how much water is in your dough relative to the flour, expressed as a percentage. A dough made with 500 grams of flour and 350 grams of water has a hydration of seventy percent. This single number tells you a lot about how the dough will feel in your hands and how the finished loaf will turn out.
Bakers use what is called baker's percentage to talk about recipes, and flour is always the baseline at one hundred percent. Every other ingredient is measured against the flour weight. So if a recipe calls for seventy percent hydration and you are using 1000 grams of flour, you add 700 grams of water. This system makes recipes easy to scale up or down and lets you compare formulas at a glance. Once you start thinking in percentages, adjusting a recipe becomes intuitive.
Lower hydration doughs, roughly in the sixty to sixty five percent range, are stiffer, easier to shape, and very beginner friendly. They hold their form well and are forgiving of handling mistakes, which makes them a great place to start. The tradeoff is a tighter, more uniform crumb rather than the big irregular holes some bakers chase. There is nothing wrong with a lower hydration loaf, and many classic breads live comfortably in this range.
Higher hydration doughs, from around seventy five percent and up, are wetter, stickier, and more challenging to handle, but they reward the effort with an open, airy crumb and a crisp, blistered crust. The extra water gives the dough more extensibility and helps create those dramatic holes. Working with wet dough takes practice and a light touch, along with techniques like wet hands and gentle handling. Do not jump straight to very high hydration until your fundamentals feel solid.
The flour you use directly affects how much water your dough can handle. Whole grain and high protein flours absorb more water than white all-purpose flour, so the same hydration percentage can feel completely different depending on your flour. This is why a recipe that works perfectly for one baker might feel too wet or too dry for another. Trust the feel of the dough as much as the numbers, and be willing to hold back or add a splash of water as you learn your ingredients.
The best way to understand hydration is to bake the same recipe at different levels and notice what changes. Start around sixty eight to seventy percent for a balanced loaf that is manageable and produces lovely results. As your confidence grows, nudge the hydration up in small steps and pay attention to how the dough responds. Hydration is not about chasing a high number for its own sake. It is about matching the dough to your skills, your flour, and the kind of bread you want to eat.