Pizza Dough Calculator

Choose how many pizzas you want and how big each dough ball should be, then set the hydration, salt, yeast, oil and sugar as baker's percentages. The calculator gives the exact grams of each ingredient, converts yeast between instant, active dry and fresh, and shows how the dough breaks down by weight. Presets cover Neapolitan, New York, Detroit-style pan and thin-crust pizzas.

Working in grams with percentages lets you scale any recipe up or down without changing its character, whether you are making one pizza for lunch or twenty for a party.

Flour = total dough weight ÷ (1 + hydration + salt + yeast + oil + sugar, as fractions)

Each ingredient = flour × its percentage

Every ingredient is expressed relative to the flour, which counts as 100%. A 62% hydration dough has 62 g of water for every 100 g of flour. Because the percentages add up to more than 100, the calculator first works out how much flour gives the total dough weight you need. Active dry yeast is used at about 1.25 times the weight of instant yeast, and fresh yeast at about 3 times.

Four Neapolitan pizzas at 250 g each. At 62% hydration, 3% salt and 0.2% instant yeast, you need 605 g flour, 375 g water, 18.2 g salt and 1.2 g yeast.

Two New York pizzas at 280 g. At 63% hydration with 2% salt, 0.4% yeast, 2% oil and 1% sugar: 333 g flour, 210 g water, 6.7 g salt, 1.3 g yeast, 6.7 g oil and 3.3 g sugar.

Yeast amount and temperature together control how fast the dough rises. A same-day dough at room temperature might use 0.5 to 1% instant yeast and be ready in a few hours, while a cold ferment in the refrigerator for 24 to 72 hours often uses 0.1 to 0.3% and develops more flavor and a more digestible crust. Warm kitchens speed everything up. If the dough doubles too quickly, use less yeast next time; if it barely moves, give it more time before adding more yeast.

Dissolve the salt in most of the water, add the flour and yeast, and mix until no dry flour remains. Rest the shaggy dough for 15 to 20 minutes so the flour absorbs the water, then knead or fold it until smooth and elastic. Let it ferment in bulk, divide it by weight into equal balls using the ball weight from the calculator, and let the balls rise again, covered so they do not dry out, until soft and puffy. Taking cold dough out of the refrigerator an hour or two before shaping makes it much easier to stretch without tearing.

Higher hydration makes a lighter, more open crust but a stickier dough that is harder to shape. Beginners usually find 60 to 65% easiest. The right figure also depends on the flour: strong bread flours and Italian 00 flours for pizza absorb different amounts of water, so the same percentage can feel different. Home ovens that top out around 250 to 290 °C (480 to 550 °F) bake more slowly than pizza ovens, so slightly higher hydration and a little oil or sugar help the crust stay tender and brown well.