Advanced options
Neapolitan-style ratios: salt 2%, dried yeast about 0.5% for a same-day rise (use a pinch, 0.1%, for a 24-48 hour cold ferment, which is where the flavour lives). Strong bread flour or 00 flour; ball, cover and rest at least 4 hours before stretching.
What The Pizza Dough Calculator Works Out
- Flour: pizza dough works backwards from ball weight. Pizzas x ball size is the total dough, and the flour is that total divided by (1 + hydration + salt + yeast as fractions of the flour). Four 250g balls at 62% hydration resolve to about 608g of flour.
- Water: flour x hydration. 60% to 62% suits domestic ovens and beginners' hands, 65% to 70% rewards pizza ovens and confidence with a lighter, blistered crust, and beyond that lies focaccia by another name.
- Salt / yeast: salt at 2% of the flour and dried yeast at 0.5% for a same-day dough that rises in 4 to 6 warm hours. A 250g ball makes a classic 12 inch; 220g a thin 10 inch; 280g a generous 13 inch.
- Custom ball weight, salt and oil (advanced): any ball size (a 180g ball for a child's pizza, 350g for a deep pan), your own salt level, and olive oil at 2% to 3% for the softer, browner New York style crust that domestic ovens favour. True Neapolitan dough has no oil.
- Fermentation plan (advanced): dropping the yeast to 0.2% for a 24 hour cold ferment or 0.1% for 48 to 72 hours in the fridge develops the flavour and extensibility pizzerias are actually selling; the cost is planning dinner two days out. The schedule table below the results lays out each step.
- Yeast to use (advanced): active dried needs about a quarter more than instant and a wake-up in some of the water; fresh yeast is three times the dried weight. Rounded to a hundredth of a gram because cold-ferment quantities are tiny: a 7g sachet is far too much.
- Bake (advanced): from your oven's maximum. A 250C domestic oven wants a steel or stone preheated a full 45 minutes, the grill trick for the final minute and 7 to 10 minute bakes; a 400C pizza oven cooks the same ball in 60 to 90 seconds, which is the honest difference between home and Naples.
- Dough cost (advanced): flour at your price plus salt and yeast, so a 250g base costs about 25p to 30p before toppings. Strong bread flour works throughout; 00 flour earns its keep at high temperatures; semolina on the peel beats flour for release.