Flour, hydration, fat, sugar, eggs, and leavening — understand the ratios and you stop needing recipes.
Section 01
Baking is a ratio, not a recipe
Cooking tolerates improvisation because you can taste as you go. Baking does not, because the chemistry is set the moment it enters the oven. That makes baking feel rigid — but the rigidity is what makes it learnable.
Almost every baked good is a variation on a handful of ratios by weight. Learn the ratios and you can generate recipes rather than follow them, scale anything, and diagnose failures instead of guessing.
Foundational baker's ratios (by weight)
Bread
5 flour : 3 water : yeast : salt
60% hydration, a standard loaf
Pasta dough
3 flour : 2 egg
By weight, not by count
Pie crust
3 flour : 2 fat : 1 water
Keep everything cold
Pound cake
1 : 1 : 1 : 1
Flour, butter, sugar, egg
Cookies
3 flour : 2 fat : 1 sugar
More sugar = thinner and crisper
Muffins / quick bread
2 flour : 2 liquid : 1 egg : 1 fat
Do not overmix
Pancakes
2 flour : 2 liquid : 1 egg : ½ fat
Lumps are fine
Custard
2 liquid : 1 egg
Crème anglaise, quiche, flan
Section 02
Flour and protein
Flour's protein content determines how much gluten it can form, and gluten is the elastic network that gives structure and chew. High protein means strong and chewy; low protein means tender and delicate.
This is why bread flour makes bad cake and cake flour makes bad bread. It is not a marketing distinction.
Flour by protein content
Cake flour
7–9%
Cakes, delicate crumb
Pastry flour
8–10%
Pie crust, biscuits, muffins
All-purpose
10–12%
The compromise — most things
Bread flour
12–14%
Yeasted bread, pizza, bagels
00 flour
11–12%, very fine
Pizza, fresh pasta
Whole wheat
13–15%
Bran cuts gluten — needs more water
Chef's tip
Weigh your flour. A cup of flour can vary by 20% depending on how it was scooped — which is why the same recipe behaves differently for different people.
Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient relative to flour at 100%. A dough with 1000 g flour and 700 g water is at 70% hydration. This is how bakers talk, and it makes recipes instantly scalable and comparable.
More water gives a more open, irregular crumb and a stickier, harder-to-handle dough. Less water gives a tight, uniform crumb and an easy dough. Ciabatta runs at 80% and is soupy; a sandwich loaf runs at 60% and handles like clay.
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55–60% — bagels, pretzels: dense, chewy, very stiff dough.
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60–65% — sandwich loaves, enriched breads: easy to handle.
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65–70% — standard artisan loaf: good balance.
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70–80% — ciabatta, focaccia, high-hydration sourdough: open crumb, sticky.
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80%+ — very open, very difficult, requires folding rather than kneading.
Section 04
What each ingredient does
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Fat shortens gluten strands, which is literally why solid fat is called shortening. More fat means more tenderness and less chew.
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Sugar sweetens, but it also tenderizes (it competes for water), browns (caramelization and Maillard), retains moisture, and slows yeast at high concentrations.
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Eggs bind, enrich, leaven (trapped air), and emulsify. Yolks add fat and richness; whites add structure and drying power.
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Salt controls fermentation, strengthens gluten, and makes everything taste like itself. Bread without salt tastes like cardboard.
·
Liquid hydrates the flour, dissolves the sugar and salt, activates the leavening, and turns to steam in the oven.
Section 05
Leavening: three kinds
Biological leavening is yeast, which ferments sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol over hours, developing flavor as it goes. Chemical leavening is baking soda and baking powder, which release gas in minutes. Mechanical leavening is air beaten into fat or eggs, as in creamed butter or whipped whites.
The critical distinction between the chemical leaveners: baking soda is a base and needs an acid to react (buttermilk, yogurt, brown sugar, cocoa, honey). Baking powder already contains its own acid and needs only moisture and heat.
Chemical leavening
Leavener
Needs
Typical amount
Baking soda
An acidic ingredient
¼ tsp per 120 g flour
Baking powder
Only moisture and heat
1 tsp per 120 g flour
Both together
Acid present but insufficient
Common in buttermilk recipes
Chef's tip
Too much baking soda without enough acid leaves a soapy, metallic taste. If your muffins taste faintly of chemicals, that is the cause.
Section 06
Gluten: develop or avoid
Bread wants gluten development — kneading, folding, and time build the elastic network that traps gas. Cakes, muffins, and pastry want the opposite: minimal mixing, cold fat, and gentle handling, because gluten there means toughness.
This is the reason muffin recipes say "mix until just combined, lumps are fine." Every extra stir is developing gluten you do not want.
·
Buy a digital scale. It is the single change that most improves home baking.
·
Room-temperature butter means about 18 °C — cool and pliable, not greasy or melting.
·
Ovens lie. An oven thermometer often reveals a 20 °C discrepancy that explains years of inconsistent results.
·
Rotate trays halfway through. No home oven heats evenly.
Avoid these
Common mistakes
Measuring flour by volume and getting wildly inconsistent results.
Overmixing muffin and cake batter, producing tough, tunneled crumb.
Substituting baking soda for baking powder or vice versa without adjusting acid.
Using melted butter where softened butter was intended — creaming needs solid fat to trap air.
Opening the oven early and collapsing a rising cake.
Ignoring dough temperature, which controls fermentation speed more than time does.
Get your hands dirty
Practice exercises
Make one basic bread dough at 60% hydration and one at 75%. Handle both and compare the crumb.
Make two batches of muffins: one mixed until just combined, one mixed for two minutes. Compare texture.
Weigh a cup of flour three times, scooping differently each time, and record the variation.
1. What does 70% hydration mean?
The dough is 70% water by total weight
Water weighs 70% of what the flour weighs
The dough loses 70% moisture in baking
Seventy percent of the flour is hydrated
2. Why does baking soda need an acidic ingredient?
It is a base and requires acid to react and release carbon dioxide
3. Why should muffin batter be barely mixed?
To avoid developing gluten, which makes them tough
To preserve the leavening
To prevent the sugar dissolving
4. Which flour suits a chewy pizza base?
If you remember nothing else
Key takeaways
Takeaways
Ratios by weight generate recipes; recipes only reproduce them.
Flour protein determines gluten potential — match the flour to the goal.
Baking soda needs acid; baking powder brings its own.
Develop gluten for bread, avoid it for everything tender.
Cook it
Practice on these recipes
Seeded Rye Quick Bread
Nordic · Side
Chocolate Chip Cookies
American · Dessert
Banana Bread
American · Dessert
All-Butter Pie Crust
American · Dessert
In your pantry
Key ingredients
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Keep going
Related lessons
Caramelization vs the Maillard Reaction
Further reading
Michael Ruhlman, Ratio — the case for cooking by proportion.
The On The Fly Kitchen · Updated 2026-07-29