Focaccia Hydration, Explained (with Baker’s Percentages)

What hydration actually means

Hydration is a baker’s percentage: the weight of water divided by the weight of flour, times 100. If you use 1000 g of flour and 800 g of water, that’s 80% hydration. It describes how wet the dough is, independent of batch size.

Everything in baker’s math is expressed relative to flour, which is always 100%. Salt at 2% of 1000 g flour is 20 g; oil at 8% is 80 g; yeast might be 0.8–1%. This is why weighing in grams matters — the ratios stay true whether you make one pan or ten, and they let you compare any two recipes on equal footing.

Cups can’t do this. A cup of flour can vary by 20% or more depending on how it’s scooped, so a "cup" recipe hides its real hydration. A kitchen scale is the single biggest upgrade a focaccia baker can make.

A focaccia hydration reference, range by range

At 65–70%: a firmer, easy-to-handle dough with a tighter, sturdier crumb. Best when the bread must carry weight — focaccia pizza and heavily topped breads — or for a first attempt where confidence matters more than maximum openness.

At 72–78%: the reliable middle. Open and tender but still manageable with a few stretch-and-folds. This is where most everyday focaccia lives and a good default if you’re unsure.

At 80–85%: a wet, slack dough that bakes into the big, custardy, irregular holes people associate with great focaccia. It’s stickier, wants oiled or wet hands and folds rather than kneading, and rewards a well-oiled pan and confident dimpling.

Above 85%: possible with strong flour and skill, but returns diminish in a home oven and handling gets fussy — the crumb is barely more open while the dough is much harder to manage. Most home bakers are best served at 78–82%.

How to change the hydration of a recipe

To raise or lower hydration, change the water while keeping flour fixed. For 500 g flour, each 5% of hydration is 25 g of water (5% × 500 g). So moving a 500 g-flour recipe from 75% to 80% means adding 25 g water (375 g → 400 g); dropping to 70% means removing 25 g.

Change hydration in small steps — 3–5% at a time — and expect the dough to feel noticeably different at the mix. Give a wetter dough a little more rest and an extra fold to build strength before it goes in the pan.

Remember that toppings and the pan add or remove effective moisture too: watery vegetables release liquid as they bake, and a generous oil film changes how the base sets. Hydration is the dough’s baseline, not the whole moisture story.

Flour changes how much water you need

Not all flour drinks the same. Higher-protein bread flour absorbs more water and can carry higher hydration than all-purpose, which is one reason strong flour suits focaccia. Whole-grain flours (whole wheat, semolina, rye) are thirstier still and often need a few extra points of water plus a longer rest to fully hydrate.

Because of this, the same percentage can feel wetter or drier depending on your flour and even the weather. Treat the number as a starting point and trust the dough: it should be soft, slack, and just short of pourable, not soupy.

Adjusting hydration with a sourdough starter

A starter is part flour and part water, and you must count both. A 100%-hydration starter is half flour, half water by weight: 200 g of it adds 100 g flour and 100 g water to your totals — so include that flour in your 100% base and that water in your hydration.

Forgetting the starter’s flour is the classic mistake — it makes your real hydration higher than you think and leaves you fighting a wetter dough than the recipe intended. The same applies to sourdough discard folded in for flavor. Our Hydration Calculator does this split for you.