Hydration by Bread Type: A Quick Reference

If there’s one question that comes up more than anything else (from friends, from people at the market, from the comments under just about every bread photo I post), it’s this: “What hydration did you use for that?”

There’s no single right answer, because it depends on the bread. A bagel and a ciabatta are both technically “dough,” but they behave nothing alike, and that’s almost entirely down to how much water is in them. So here’s the reference table I wish someone had handed me years ago: the range I actually start from for each type, before adjusting for my own flour and kitchen.

These are starting ranges, not rules carved in stone. Treat them as where to begin, not where you have to land.

Your flour moves the range

I wrote about this in more detail on the calculator page itself, but it’s worth repeating here: these percentages assume a reasonably standard flour. A weak, low-protein flour will struggle to hold the top end of any of these ranges: you’ll end up with a puddle, not a dough. A strong bread flour can often go higher than the range suggests. The table gets you in the right neighborhood; your own flour decides how far you can push it.

Hydration isn’t the whole story — watch your dough temperature too

Get the hydration right and your dough can still fight you if the temperature is off. The percentage in the table above tells you how much water to use. It says nothing about how warm that water should be, and that turns out to matter just as much.

Every time you mix dough, by hand or in a machine, you add heat to it through friction. The more vigorously you mix, and the longer it takes, the warmer your dough ends up, regardless of what temperature the water started at. It’s your final dough temperature, not your water temperature, that actually drives how the dough ferments.

I remember checking mine with a probe thermometer straight out of the mixer the first time: 30°C (86°F). Fine to eat, but far too warm for a controlled rise — everything happens too fast and too unevenly.

The fix is entirely in your hands, literally. Adjust the temperature of the water you mix with, not the recipe. If your dough keeps coming out too warm, cool the water down; a can of water left in the fridge is often enough. Mix again, check the final dough temperature, and take note. Over a few attempts you’ll find the water temperature that gets your dough where you want it, for your specific mixing method and time. Mine landed around 6°C (43°F) water for a 23°C (73°F) finished dough, mixing by hand for about ten minutes. Yours will likely be different, since it depends on your kitchen, your mixer or your hands, and how long you knead.

This is exactly what the notes field on the calculator is for. Once you’ve found the water temperature and mixing time that work for you, write it down next to the recipe (“water at 6°C (43°F), hand-mixed 10 minutes”) so next time you don’t have to rediscover it from scratch.

If you’re moving up the table

Say your usual sandwich loaf sits at 62% and you want to try your hand at ciabatta. Don’t jump straight to 80%. Increase in small steps of 2–3% at a time, bake, see how the dough behaved, and adjust again. It’s slower than just guessing, but it’s the difference between a dough you can actually shape and one that ends up as a sticky mess on your counter.

Whatever you’re making, plug your flour weight into the calculator, drag the hydration slider to your target, and let it work out the water for you. If it turns out well, or if it doesn’t, the notes field is there so you remember what you actually did next time.

— Rob