These are a set of tools that we developed to help you scale recipes depending on the pan you have available, or to help scale a recipe up or down. There is also a hydration calculator to calculate the hydration of a recipe, or calculate the changes needed to alter hydration.
If you find this resource helpful, please feel free to link to it from your own website!
Table of contents
Pan Size Converter
How to use this calculator:
- Use it to convert between pan sizes. It doesn't matter if you use cm or inches provided they are consistent across the pan sizes (etc 9" square to 9" round or 23cm square to 23cm round, NOT 9" square to 23cm round)
- This calculator assumes that the thickness is conserved - ie if you have a cake which is 2" high in a 6" pan it will be 2" high in the 8" pan too.
- If you need to divide an egg, the best way to do that is to work out the gram weight for your eggs (usually about 50g per egg), then whisk up an egg and divide it by weight.
- Please note that this does not account for change in baking time - you will need to adjust that accordingly.
- If the recipe has brown butter in it, make sure you scale both the quantity in the ingredients and the quantity in the method.
An Example:
The recipe I have calls for a 9" round pan, but I only have a 9" square pan. I would:
- Enter 'Round' and '9' in the first section of the calculator
- Enter 'Square' and '9' in the second section
- Hit 'enter' - the calculator will spit out the value '1.27'
- I would round this down to 1.25, Multiply all components of the recipe by 1.25 to convert from a 9" round pan to a 9" square. You can do this using the component calculator.
Make sure you hit enter after adding the second value.
Remember all values are done as a decimal - so if you want to reduce a recipe by ¾ you multiply it by 0.75. If you want to scale it up 1 ½ times, you would multiply by 1.5, etc
For converting layer cakes this calculator also works - for example if you have a 6" layer cake recipe and want to use 8" pans, do the conversion for one pan then multiply each component by the value the calculator gives.
Recipe Scaling Calculator
How to use the component calculator
This section is to help you multiply the components of the recipe you are converting. It is done based on the number you input rather than a gram weight so if you need to use it to convert tsp or tbsp (or cups, gross), then you can just input the number value and it will calculate the conversion for you. Input the amount you want to scale by, then use the calculator to generate the quantity of each ingredient.
Remember all values are done as a decimal - so if you want to reduce a recipe by ¾ you multiply it by 0.75. If you want to scale it up 1 ½ times, you would multiply by 1.5, etc
An Example:
I want to multiply a recipe by 0.75. I would:
- Input '0.75' into the 'scale by' section
- Input the weight or quantity of the ingredient in the recipe into the 'ingredient measurement' section, for example if the recipe called for 125g butter, I would add in 125g
- Hit Enter
- Note down the number that is given - in this case it would be 93.75g
- Repeat for all remaining ingredients.
I would love to hear any feedback you may have! I can't wait to hear how you like the new calculator!
How to convert from grams to cups
Baking with cups just isn't accurate due to a number of factors. You can read more about why I only provide recipes in grams here, or if you need a scale recommendation, here is the one I use. Happy Baking!
Hydration Calculator
Use this calculator to calculate the hydration of a recipe. The hydration of a recipe is the quantity of water relative to the quantity of flour and is done as a percentage - this is known as a baker's percentage.
An Example
- My focaccia recipe has 535g water and 600g flour. I can plug both those quantities in to calculate the hydration of the recipe.
- If I wanted to increase the hydration to 91%, I would input the hydration value and the flour quantity (600g), and then hit enter, and the calculator would tell me what to increase the weight of the water to.
Hydration is always calculated by weight, and is always calculated relative to the quantity of flour.