The 3 Most Common Recipe Scaling Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Why Recipe Scaling Goes Wrong

Scaling a recipe sounds simple — just multiply everything. But in practice, it's one of the biggest sources of wasted ingredients and failed batches in bakeries.

Mistake #1: Rounding Errors Compound

When you're scaling a recipe by hand, small rounding errors on individual ingredients can add up. Round the flour up by 50g and the water down by 30g, and suddenly your hydration is off by several percentage points.

The fix: Let software handle the math. When you change any single value — portions, total weight, or one ingredient — every other ingredient recalculates with precision.

Mistake #2: Forgetting Humidity Adjustments

Professional bakers know that humidity affects hydration. But when you're rushing to scale a recipe at 4 AM, it's easy to forget to adjust water content for today's conditions.

The fix: Set up hydration rules on your recipes. The system checks the humidity level you enter and automatically tells your team exactly how much extra water to add.

Mistake #3: Scaling Linearly When You Shouldn't

Not everything scales linearly. Yeast, salt, and leavening agents often need different ratios at larger scales. If you're blindly multiplying everything by 3x, you might end up with bread that tastes like a salt lick.

The fix: Use baker's percentages and set up your recipes with proper scaling ratios. Good bakery software lets you define these once and applies them automatically every time you scale.

The Result

Eliminating these three mistakes alone can save a bakery hundreds of dollars per month in wasted ingredients and failed batches. More importantly, it gives your team confidence that every batch will come out right.