What is Hydration Ratio?

Start with a real example: a 1kg batch of artisan bread dough. You use 650g of flour and 422.5g of water. That's a 65% hydration ratio—the water weight (422.5g) divided by the flour weight (650g), multiplied by 100. This dough produces a tight, chewy crumb with small holes. Your cost: $1.20 in flour, $0.15 in water and salt, $0.45 in labor and overhead. Selling price: $6.50 per loaf (650g). Your margin: $4.70 per loaf. Now raise the hydration to 75%. Same 1kg batch, but now you use 571g of flour and 428.5g of water. The ratio is 75% (428.5 ÷ 571 × 100). This dough is wetter, stickier, harder to handle—but it ferments differently. You get larger, irregular holes and a more open crumb structure. Your cost drops: $1.05 in flour, $0.15 in water and salt, $0.50 in labor (takes 5 minutes longer to shape). Selling price stays at $6.50. Your margin jumps to $4.80 per loaf—an extra $0.10 per loaf, or $3 per week if you sell 30 loaves. Why does hydration matter? Because it changes three things: fermentation speed (higher hydration ferments faster), crumb structure (higher hydration = bigger holes), and how much flour you need to hit your weight target. A 55% hydration dough is tight and dense—good for sandwich bread where you need thin slices. A 78% hydration dough is open and irregular—good for artisan loaves where customers pay for visual drama. At 85% hydration, you're making a wet batter that's almost impossible to shape by hand without using a bench scraper and wet hands every 10 seconds. Your hydration ratio also determines your ingredient cost per loaf. If flour costs $0.80 per kg and water costs $0.05 per liter, a 65% hydration loaf costs $1.20 in flour. A 75% hydration loaf costs $1.05 in flour but uses more water. The difference is small per loaf, but across 50 loaves a week, that's $7.50 in flour savings—or $390 a year. Most bakers don't track this. You should.