The Fresh Loaf

News & Information for Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts

flour-bread weight ratio?

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sevenagir's picture

flour-bread weight ratio?

Can anybody help? I need some information about flour/bread ratio. Say you wanna make 100 gram regular white/whole wheat breat, how much grams of flour would you need? Or asked in another way, if you use 100 grams of flour, how much will your bread weigh? I just need to figure out the flour/bread ratio for my research about 18th century bread-making in Istanbul. Thanks a lot!


Chuck's picture

The flour-to-bread weight ratio (how much is left after some moisture escapes during baking) is quite variable. It depends on at least i) the shape of the loaves and ii) the consistency of the dough and especially iii) how hot you consider "done". I'm not aware of any standard rule of thumb.


(My silly wild assed guess would be that moisture losses are usually somewhere in the range 10%-30%. Commercial bakers that legally have to produce loaves of a certain weight must have some way to do this fairly exactly  ...but I don't know what it is:-)

flournwater's picture

If you make a simple bread (flour, water, salt, yeast) you could probably use the sum weights of the flour, yeast and salt and a percentage of the water and come pretty close but, as Chuck pointed out, the water evaporation variable would be very difficult to tie down before baking.  Try mixing up a couple of simple formula loaves of varying hydration levels and see if you find a constant in the results.

Aussie Pete's picture
Aussie Pete

Hi There,

Please bear with me on a long winded way of making my point. Try looking for bakers percentages where everything is expressed in percentages against the volume of flour being used.

I think I am correct but please someone correct me if I am not.

eg. Where a recipe calls for say 400grms of flour(400grms being 100%) and your moisture content is required at 65%.  65% X 400grms = 260 grms of moisture. The same applies to your salt and yeast application.

This allows you to adapt a recipe to volume of bread you wish to make. So if a recipe calls for 900grms (australian measurement) of flour but you dont want such a big loaf you can use 600grms of flour and the percentages will give you the correct weight for moisture salt yeast etc that is required.

My point here is to find these tables for bread recipes you wish to make and once all the contents are in a bowl together weigh it to obtain a wet weight. After kneading and baking weigh the finished dry cooked loaf product  and note the weight differences. Do it a number of times to obtain an average reading.

This is about the only thing that comes to my mind .......good luck and let us all know how you go..............Peter

ssor's picture

Just one example. A couple of years ago I was making and selling six loave a week at church to raise funds for a projeact \. The raw dough was divided into one pound six ounce portions and the finished loave baked in 4.2/8 inch pans was close to one pound three ounces. Small round loaves would lose more weight.

sallam's picture

According to "Part 3 of Willie Prejean's original Baking Science series", bread dough loses 13% of its weight after handling, proofing, baking and cooling. Source:

ssor's church loaves lost 13% of its dough weight.

Buns could lose more than loaves, I guess.

I'll make burger buns then report the weight loss percentage here.

sandydog's picture

13% weight loss for baked dough is about right - Bearing in mind that tinned loaves will usually lose slightly less weight than hearth baked loaves (Try it and see)

In the UK we would scale dough off at between 470-480g for 400g loaves, and between 920-950g for 800g loaves to ensure we comply with current legislation.

It is however, in practice, a little more complex than that - Remember : 

The OP just needed to figure out the flour/bread ratio, well

Just supposing that the loaves included a high percentage of grains other than flour - that will change the relationship quite a bit - the baking loss will still be approximately 13% of the dough weight but it will be impossible to equate that to flour weight unless you know the recipe.

Here's a couple of simple examples -

Assuming dough at 65% hydration in example 1.

100g Flour + 65g Water + 2g Yeast + 2g Salt = 169g Dough - 13% = 147g                                                       Bread to Flour ratio is 147/100 = 147%

Assuming Flour in dough at 65% hydration, and grains at 125% hydration in example 2.

169g of Dough no 1, including 30g grains + 37g water = 236g Dough - 13% = 205g                                               Bread to Flour ratio is 205/100 = 205%

It makes a big difference as you can see - However, if there are no grains other than flour in the loaves then you have already received the correct advice from other posters..

Good luck with your research - What is its purpose?



sallam's picture

Thanks for the great info, Brian.

I made burger buns today, and the weight loss from total weight of ingredients to the finished and cooled buns was 18.6%

I wonder what percentage do you use when scaling dough for buns.

I only use those info to compare the cost of my home-made bread and the ones we buy from the bakery.