Sourdough Hydration for Beginners

Wondering what sourdough hydration means, how to calculate it, or whether a higher or lower hydration dough will give you better bread? You’re in the right place!

Sourdough hydration is simply the amount of water in your dough compared to the amount of flour. And while the percentages might sound a little confusing at first, they’re actually much easier to understand than you think (even if you’re a complete beginner!).

In this guide, I’ll explain what sourdough hydration is, how to calculate your dough’s hydration percentage, and how different hydration levels affect your sourdough bread. You’ll also learn the difference between high and low hydration dough, which is easier for beginners to work with, and how to adjust the hydration of your favorite sourdough recipes.

Because understanding sourdough hydration shouldn’t require a maths degree or a complicated calculator!

How Is Sourdough Hydration Calculated?

Sourdough hydration is the amount of water in your dough compared to the amount of flour, expressed as a percentage. It tells you how wet or dry your dough is and can affect everything from how easy it is to hande to the texture of your finished sourdough bread.

The basic calculation for hydration is:

(Weight of Water divided by Weight of Flour) x 100

For example – 350 g of water divided by 500 g of flour x 100 = 70%

Of course you also want to have the overall amount of flour and water, including your sourdough starter in the calculation. If you calculate the hydration level for my simple sourdough bread recipe it would be:

WEIGHT OF WATER:
25 g from starter
350 g from recipe
TOTAL 375 g

WEIGHT OF FLOUR
25 g from starter
500 g from recipe
TOTAL 525 g

total amount of water (375 g) divided by total amount of flour (525 g) = 0.714
0.714 x 100 = 71.4%

You might also like this guide to baker’s math in sourdough which looks at expressing other ingredients using percentages.

How Does Hydration Change The Texture of Sourdough Bread

The easiest way to understand sourdough hydration is to think about how it changes the feel of your dough:

• Lower hydration (60–65%) produces a firmer, less sticky dough that’s generally easier to shape and handle. It’s a great starting point for beginners and a good place to start if you’re using all-purpose flour rather than bread flour.
• Medium hydration (65–75%) gives you a balance between manageable dough and a soft, airy crumb. This is where many everyday sourdough bread recipes sit, including my simple sourdough bread recipe. I recommend using high protein bread flour for medium hydration dough.
• Higher hydration (75–85%+) produces wetter, stickier dough that can be more challenging to handle but has the potential to create a more open, airy crumb with larger holes. This high hydration sourdough bread recipe is a good example of higher hydration dough.

This is a table of common hydration levels in sourdough. I’ve varied the amounts of starter for each one as sometimes you might be adding more or less starter – depending on the ambient temperature you’re dealing with. Remember, the higher the hydration of the dough, the faster bulk fermentation will occur.

What Are The Benefits of Higher Hydration Sourdough?

While higher hydration doughs can be harder to work with, there are some benefits of increasing the hydration in your dough. If you want to start experimenting with higher hydration sourdough, I suggest starting with small increases to your water content. You don’t want to jump from 70% to 85% and then not be able to shape the dough when the time comes.

• A high-hydration loaf has a naturally thinner, crispier crust. 
• An increased amount of water in sourdough will cause the dough to ferment more quickly. This is important if you want your dough to have a shorter bulk fermentation time. Adjust the amount of starter to ensure that your dough does not ferment too fast.
• It can be easier to attain a more open crumb with higher hydration sourdough (but not always – open crumb occurs due to fermentation, not always water content).
• Higher hydration dough will be stretchy and extensible, which makes it perfect for processes such as lamination.
• While you don’t need a high hydration dough to bake amazing sourdough, it can of course be a fun challenge if you’ve been baking for a while.

Sourdough Starter Hydration

When talking about a sourdough starter, 100% hydration simply means you’re using equal amounts of flour and water. So if you had 50 g of sourdough starter, you’d feed it 5 0g of flour and 50g of water. You’ll also see 100% hydration for a sourdough starter express as 1:1:1.

1:2:2 would also be considered 100% hydration because even though you’re only using 1 part starter, you’re still feeding an equal 2 parts of flour and 2 parts of water.  

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