Pizza Dough Calculator

What's the key thing to understand about Hydration Explained?

Hydration is the water weight as a percentage of flour weight. 60% hydration = 60g water per 100g flour. Higher hydration creates larger air pockets, chewier texture, and better oven spring — but is harder to handle. Lower hydration gives crispier, easier-to-shape dough.

What do I need to know about Yeast Quantities?

For same-day dough: 0.3–0.5% dry yeast relative to flour. Cold ferment (24–72hr in fridge): 0.05–0.1% dry yeast — slow fermentation develops flavour dramatically. Fresh yeast: use 3× the amount of dry yeast. Instant yeast: slightly less than active dry.

What do I need to know about Baker's Percentages?

Pizza recipes use baker's percentages — all ingredients expressed as a percentage of flour weight. This makes scaling to any number of pizzas trivial: keep percentages constant and multiply flour by however many dough balls you need.

What's the key thing to understand about Food Safety Fundamentals?

Food safety rules apply regardless of cooking method or time. The danger zone for bacterial growth is 4-60 degrees C — food should not remain in this range for more than 2 hours. Core temperature targets: poultry 75 degrees C throughout (no pink allowed), pork 75 degrees C, beef/lamb can be pink when above 63 degrees C (due to surface-only bacteria on whole cuts). Never use the same equipment for raw and cooked food without washing. Leftovers should be cooled rapidly (within 2 hours), refrigerated promptly, and used within 3-4 days, or frozen for longer storage. When reheating, food should reach 75 degrees C throughout, and should only be reheated once.

What should I know about Dough Ball Size and Pizza Style?

The dough_ball_size you choose has a big effect on the kind of pizza you end up with, independent of hydration or flour type. Neapolitan-style pizzas traditionally use a relatively light dough ball, commonly in the 230–280g range, designed to stretch thin into a roughly 10–12 inch pizza with a soft, pliable crust suited to very short, very high-heat bakes. New York-style pizza typically uses a heavier ball, often 300–350g or more, built for a larger diameter with a crust that's thin at the center but still substantial enough to hold up to folding. Deep pan, Sicilian, and other thicker styles use proportionally more dough again relative to their pan size, since the crust itself is meant to be a thicker, bread-like component of the pizza rather than a thin base. Choosing a dough ball size that matches your intended style and bake method — rather than an arbitrary round number — will make the biggest practical difference to how your results compare to pizzas you're used to eating, more so than small adjustments to hydration or salt percentage.

What should I know about Cold Fermentation for Pizza Dough?

Letting pizza dough ferment slowly in the refrigerator for 24 to 72 hours, rather than rising quickly at room temperature, is one of the most reliable ways to improve both flavor and digestibility without any special equipment. The cold slows yeast activity dramatically, which means a successful long ferment generally needs less yeast than a same-day dough calculated for a quick rise — using the full amount of yeast this calculator suggests for a fast rise, then also cold-fermenting for days, risks an overproofed, overly sour, structurally weak dough. During the extended time, enzymes continue breaking down starches and proteins even at low temperature, developing more complex flavor and making the gluten more extensible, which is why many pizzerias build their workflow around balling dough a day or more ahead. If you plan to cold ferment, it's worth pulling the dough out of the fridge for roughly 1–2 hours before shaping to let it come back closer to room temperature, since cold dough is stiffer, harder to stretch evenly, and more likely to tear or spring back during shaping.

What should I know about Neapolitan vs New York Style Dough Differences?

Neapolitan and New York pizza doughs share a similar ingredient list but differ meaningfully in hydration, fermentation, and fat content, producing very different textures. Neapolitan dough is typically higher hydration (around 60-65%), uses no oil, and is fermented for a relatively short period (often same-day, a few hours at room temperature, though some styles use a longer cold ferment), producing a soft, light, slightly charred crust designed for very high heat (430°C+) and short bake times of 60-90 seconds. New York style dough usually includes a small amount of oil and sometimes sugar, uses moderate hydration (around 58-62%), and is typically given a longer cold fermentation (24-72 hours in the fridge), producing a chewier, more structured crust that holds up to lower home-oven or standard pizzeria temperatures (around 260-290°C) and longer bake times of several minutes, giving it the characteristic foldable but sturdy slice. The oil in New York dough also contributes to a slightly more tender crumb and better browning at lower temperatures than Neapolitan dough would achieve in the same oven. Choosing between the two styles should be based primarily on what oven temperature is realistically achievable at home, since Neapolitan dough baked too slowly (because a home oven can't reach pizza-oven temperatures) tends to dry out and toughen rather than achieving its intended light, airy texture.

How Much Dough Do I Need for Different Pizza Sizes?

Dough ball weight scales roughly with pizza area (diameter squared), and pizzeria practice converges on broadly similar figures across styles, adjusted for crust thickness preference.

Thinner-crust styles (Neapolitan, thin-crust) sit toward the lower end of each range, while thicker, pan, or deep-dish styles need noticeably more dough per inch of diameter than these thin-crust-oriented figures suggest, since they're carrying a much deeper layer of dough rather than just a bigger diameter.

Worked Example: Baker's Percentage Recipe for Three 250g Dough Balls

Target: three dough balls at 250g each = 750g total dough, at 65% hydration, 2% salt, 1% instant yeast. Total percentage = 100 (flour) + 65 (water) + 2 (salt) + 1 (yeast) = 168%. Flour weight = 750 ÷ 1.68 ≈ 446.4g. Water = 446.4 × 0.65 ≈ 290.2g. Salt = 446.4 × 0.02 ≈ 8.9g. Yeast = 446.4 × 0.01 ≈ 4.5g. Checking: 446.4 + 290.2 + 8.9 + 4.5 ≈ 750g, matching the target. This is the standard calculation for scaling any pizza dough formula to a specific number of dough balls at a specific weight — the baker's percentages (65% hydration, 2% salt, 1% yeast) stay fixed as the recipe's identity, while the flour weight is what actually changes to hit a different total dough weight.

Why You Shouldn't Eat Raw Pizza Dough

Raw pizza dough carries the same food safety concern as any raw flour-based dough: flour is an unheated agricultural product that can occasionally harbour E. coli or Salmonella, and the FDA and CDC specifically advise against eating raw dough or letting it be handled as a plaything, since hand-to-mouth contact after kneading raw dough is also a recognised transmission route. This applies regardless of fermentation time or cold-proofing — neither yeast fermentation nor refrigeration reliably destroys these pathogens, only full baking does. A properly baked pizza, with its crust reaching well above any pathogen's survival temperature throughout a normal bake (especially at the high oven temperatures typical for pizza), is not a food safety concern once it has finished cooking; the caution is specifically about tasting the dough itself before it goes in the oven.

What's the Difference Between Neapolitan and New York Style Dough in Terms of Formula?

Neapolitan dough traditionally uses just four ingredients — flour, water, salt, and a small amount of yeast — at a relatively high hydration (around 60-65%) with no oil, reflecting its very short, very hot (often 400-485C+ wood-fired oven) bake time of 60-90 seconds, which needs a thin, extensible dough that chars quickly without drying out. New York style dough typically includes a small amount of oil and sometimes a touch of sugar in the formula alongside flour, water, salt, and yeast, at a somewhat lower hydration (around 58-62%), producing a dough that's easier to stretch thin by hand, holds up well to a longer home-oven or pizzeria-deck-oven bake at a more moderate 250-290C, and gives the characteristic slightly chewy, foldable crust New York style is known for. Both are still baker's-percentage recipes underneath, but the oil and sugar inclusions, and the hydration target, are what differentiate the two styles' formulas from each other.