Baguette dough calculator
Hamelman's poolish baguette: 66% hydration, a third of the flour fermented overnight.
The classic French baguette on a poolish, straight from Jeffrey Hamelman’s professional formula: 66% hydration, 2% salt, and a third of the flour prefermented overnight.
How it works
The poolish
The evening before, mix 33% of the total flour with an equal weight of water (100% hydration) and a pinch of the yeast. The totals already include it, so take the poolish’s flour and water out of the final-dough amounts. After 12–16 hours at room temperature it should be bubbly and just starting to recede.
Hamelman’s kilo batch
1000 g of flour, 660 g of water, 20 g of salt and 4.7 g of instant yeast. The poolish is 330 g of flour and 330 g of water with a pinch of the yeast; the final dough gets the other 670 g of flour, 330 g of water, the salt and the rest of the yeast. That is 1685 g of dough, five baguettes of 335 g. On the default three-baguette batch the poolish is 197 g of flour and 197 g of water out of 597 g and 394 g.
Why 66% and not more
Hamelman’s baguette is deliberately drier than the fashionable high-hydration loaves: 66% water makes a dough you can actually shape into tight, even cylinders with good scoring. The flavor complexity comes from the poolish, not from extra water.
Shaping and baking
Divide at about 335 g per baguette, preshape, rest, then roll to length with tapered ends. Bake hot with steam on a stone or steel until deep gold. The total yeast across poolish and final dough is just 0.47% instant.
Sources & methodology
Every percentage in this calculator traces to the published sources below — nothing is invented. Where respected sources disagree, the default sits inside the documented range.
- Jeffrey Hamelman, “Bread” — baguettes with poolish (p. 101) (read via Bread cetera) — The poolish baguette followed exactly: 66% water, 2% salt, 0.47% instant yeast, poolish from a third of the flour fermented 12–16 h.
FAQ
Can I skip the poolish and make a straight dough?
You will get a decent white stick, but not this baguette; the poolish is where the aroma, the cream-colored crumb and the crackling crust come from. If time is short, the generic yeast-bread calculator serves the straight-dough case better.
How much yeast goes into the poolish itself?
Hamelman’s poolish gets roughly 0.2% of the poolish flour, a pinch. The rest of the total 0.47% is mixed into the final dough.
Why are my baguettes flat?
Usually loose shaping or overproofing. This dough is firm enough to build real surface tension; use it, and proof until the poke mark springs back slowly, not until the loaf doubles.
Where do the reproductions differ from the book?
Both pages we read build the poolish from the same third of the flour and keep 66% water and 2% salt. Bread cetera says outright that it changes Hamelman’s mixing method, the final-dough yeast and the folding; The Dawg House is a metric adaptation. All three keep the same formula and differ in the handling.
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