Pizza Dough Calculator

Two calculations sit behind a pizza recipe. The first works out how much dough one pizza needs, and the second turns that into flour, water, salt and yeast.

Pizzerias size the ball with a thickness factor, the ounces of dough per square inch of finished pizza. It exists because dough follows the area of the pizza, not its width. Going from a 12 inch pizza to a 16 inch one is a third more across but nearly twice the surface, and a recipe scaled by diameter comes out thin and short.

From there it is baker's percentages, the same system as bread. Flour is always 100% and every other ingredient is a share of it, which is what lets one recipe scale from two pizzas to twenty without changing how it behaves.

1. Step 1 Dough for one pizza ball_oz = π × (diameter ÷ 2)² × thickness_factor Thin 0.07, Neapolitan 0.085, New York 0.10, pan 0.14 ounces per square inch.
2. Step 2 Total dough total = pizzas × ball_weight
3. Step 3 Flour, working backwards flour = total ÷ (1 + hydration% + salt% + yeast% + oil% + sugar%)
4. Step 4 Every other ingredient water = flour × hydration% salt = flour × salt% yeast = flour × yeast%
5. Step 5 Swapping yeast active_dry = instant × 1.25 fresh = instant × 3 The same organism at different moisture levels, so convert rather than substitute one for one.
6. Step 6 Sourdough instead true_hydration = (water + starter ÷ 2) ÷ (flour + starter ÷ 2) A 100% hydration starter is half flour and half water, so it shifts the real hydration.

For example, four 12 inch New York pizzas. Each ball is π × 36 × 0.1 = 11.3 ounces, or 321 g, so the batch is 1,283 g of dough. At 62% hydration, 2.5% salt and 0.3% instant yeast that divides into 778 g of flour, 482 g of water, 19.5 g of salt and 2.3 g of yeast.

• Thickness factors are starting points rather than rules. Pizzerias tune them to their own oven, flour and stretch, and a factor that suits a 900 °F wood oven gives a different result in a home oven at 500 °F.
• Hydration changes how the dough handles, not how much a ball weighs. A 12 inch pizza takes the same 321 g of dough at 58% as at 70%, it just stretches differently.
• The yeast percentage assumes a rise of a few hours at room temperature. A long cold ferment in the fridge, which is where most of the flavour comes from, uses a fraction of it, often 0.05 to 0.1% instant over 24 to 72 hours.
• Yeast conversions are the standard ones, about 1.25 times instant for active dry and three times for fresh. Brands differ slightly, and old yeast is weaker than any conversion allows for.
• Salt is calculated on the flour weight, not on the finished dough. The two differ by more than half, so a recipe quoting salt on total weight is a different number entirely.
• Sourdough starter is assumed to be at 100% hydration, equal flour and water. A stiff starter changes both the true hydration and the timing.
• Flour strength is not modelled. A high protein bread flour absorbs more water than a supermarket plain flour, so the same hydration can feel quite different between two bags.
• Nothing is allowed for the flour you use on the bench and the peel. It is small, but it is not zero, and it stiffens the outside of the dough.