Pizza dough by baker’s percentages
Pizza makers write recipes as baker’s percentages: every ingredient is a percentage of the flour weight, which counts as 100%. This makes it easy to scale a recipe to any number of pizzas and to compare doughs. A classic Neapolitan-style dough looks like this:
| Ingredient | Baker’s percentage |
|---|---|
| Flour | 100% |
| Water | 58% to 65% |
| Salt | 2.5% to 3% |
| Yeast | 0.1% to 1%, depending on the rise |
| Oil | 0% (Neapolitan) to 3% (New York style) |
How the calculator works
It multiplies the number of dough balls by their weight to get the total dough, then divides by the sum of all percentages to find the flour:
flour = total dough ÷ (1 + hydration + salt + yeast + oil)
Each other ingredient is the flour weight times its percentage.
Worked example
Four balls of 250 g, at 65% hydration, 2.8% salt and 0.4% instant dry yeast:
| Ingredient | Weight |
|---|---|
| Flour | 595 g |
| Water | 386 g |
| Salt | 16.6 g |
| Instant dry yeast | 2.4 g |
| Total dough | 1,000 g |
Hydration
- 55% to 60%: firm and easy to stretch, good for thin and crispy pizzas.
- 60% to 65%: classic Neapolitan, soft with a puffy rim.
- 65% to 75%: lighter, more open crumb; stickier dough that benefits from strong flour and folds.
- Above 75%: pan and Roman-style pizzas, baked in a tray.
Yeast and rising time
The longer and colder the rise, the less yeast you need and the more flavor the dough develops:
| Rise | Instant dry yeast | Fresh yeast |
|---|---|---|
| Same day, 4 to 8 hours at room temperature | about 0.5% to 1% | about 1.5% to 2.5% |
| 24 hours in the fridge | about 0.3% | about 0.7% |
| 48 to 72 hours in the fridge | about 0.1% to 0.2% | about 0.3% to 0.5% |
Active dry yeast is used at about 1.25 times the instant dry amount, fresh yeast at about 2.5 times.
Tips
- Weigh everything, including water: cups of flour can vary by 20% or more.
- Dissolve the salt in the water before adding the flour; keep the yeast away from undissolved salt.
- Bread flour or Italian “00” flour with 12% to 13% protein gives a chewy, extensible dough.
- Divide and ball the dough a few hours before baking, and let cold balls warm up for about an hour before stretching.
- A home oven at its highest setting with a preheated stone or steel gives the best crust.