Pizza Dough Calculator
Calculate total flour, water, salt, and yeast needed for a target number and size of pizzas using baker's percentages. Use it for meal-prepping for a crowd or dialing in a consistent home dough recipe.
Last updated: September 2026
Formula below · 3 sources (pizzamaking.com, kingarthurbaking.com, Wikipedia) · Updated Sep 2026
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About this calculator
The formula uses baker's percentages, the global standard for bread and pizza formulation: every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of total flour weight. Flour is always 100%. Total dough mass per pizza is the dough ball weight (typically 220–280 g for a 12-inch Neapolitan, 300–360 g for 14-inch NY style, 450–550 g for a Detroit pan). The formula breaks dough into flour, water (hydration %), salt (typically 2.5–3% of flour), and yeast (typically 0.1–0.5% for long ferment, up to 1% for same-day dough). The calculator takes the dough-ball weight for your size (150, 250, 350 or 450 g) times the style factor (1.0 thin to 2.0 deep dish) as the total dough per pizza, and divides the total dough by (1 + hydration + 0.02 + 0.005) to get flour, where 0.02 and 0.005 are its salt (2%) and yeast (0.5%) defaults. Water = flour × hydration, salt = flour × 0.02, yeast = flour × 0.005. Hydration drives crumb structure: 55–60% (low) for thin cracker-style crusts; 60–65% standard NY style; 65–70% Neapolitan; 70–80% high-hydration artisan; 80%+ very wet doughs (Roman al taglio, focaccia-pizza hybrids). Higher hydration = more open crumb, more blistering, harder to handle. Edge cases: zero pizzas produces zero output; very small ball sizes (<200 g) underestimate handling loss and produce thin floppy crusts. Critical absent factors: fermentation time and temperature drive yeast quantity (cold 72 h ferment uses 0.1% IDY; same-day room temp uses 0.5–1% IDY); flour protein content (10–12% AP flour vs 12–14% bread flour vs 13–15% 00 flour) affects hydration tolerance; oven temperature determines achievable style (500 °F home oven for NY style; 700–900 °F for Neapolitan).
How to use
Example 1 — Four large thin-crust pizzas. Large (350 g ball), Thin Crust (1.0), Medium hydration (60%). Total dough = 4 × 350 × 1.0 = 1,400 g. Flour = 1,400 / (1 + 0.60 + 0.02 + 0.005) = 1,400 / 1.625 ≈ 861.54 g. Water ≈ 861.5 × 0.60 = 517 g. Salt ≈ 861.5 × 0.02 = 17 g. Yeast (IDY) ≈ 861.5 × 0.005 = 4.3 g. ✓ Mix, bulk ferment 24–48 h cold for best flavor (and cut the yeast to about 0.2% if you do), ball, and proof 4–6 h at room temp. Example 2 — Six medium Neapolitan-style pizzas. Medium (250 g balls), Thin Crust (1.0), High hydration (65%). Total dough = 6 × 250 = 1,500 g. Flour = 1,500 / 1.675 ≈ 895.52 g of 00 flour. Water ≈ 896 × 0.65 = 582 g. Salt ≈ 896 × 0.02 = 18 g (traditional Neapolitan dough uses 2.5–3% salt, so you may add a few grams more). Yeast ≈ 4.5 g at the calculator's 0.5%, or about 1 g IDY for a 48 h cold ferment. ✓ Bake at maximum oven temperature with a steel or stone preheated 60+ minutes.
Frequently asked questions
What is baker's percentage and why use it?
Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a percentage of total flour weight, with flour itself always set to 100%. A 65% hydration dough means water weighs 65% of the flour weight. A 2.5% salt dough means salt weighs 2.5% of flour. The system scales effortlessly: doubling flour and applying the same percentages doubles the recipe; you can swap pizza count and ball weight while keeping the same hydration/salt/yeast profile. It also allows direct comparison across recipes — "65% hydration NY" describes a specific dough character regardless of batch size, while "1 cup water" tells you nothing about the dough. Professional bakers and serious home pizza makers communicate exclusively in baker's percentage; learning to think this way unlocks every modern dough recipe online (Reinhart, Forkish, Robertson, all use it).
What hydration should I use for my pizza?
Match hydration to style and oven. Cracker/tavern style: 50–55% — very dry, rolled or pressed thin, baked on a pan at moderate temperature. NY street slice: 60–65% — moderate hydration, hand-stretched thin, baked at 500–600 °F on a steel for 6–9 minutes. Neapolitan: 60–70% — soft pliable dough, charcoal-blistered crust, baked at 800–900 °F for 60–90 seconds in a wood-fired oven (or modern Ooni/Roccbox). High-hydration artisan/Detroit: 70–80% — pan-baked with crispy bottom and pillowy crumb. Roman al taglio: 80%+ — very wet, long bulk ferment, baked in trays. Higher hydration gives more open crumb and char potential but is harder to stretch and shape. Match to your oven: home ovens topping at 550 °F do better with 62–65% hydration than aiming for 70%+ which needs higher temperature to color before drying out.
How much yeast and salt should I use?
Salt: 2–3% of flour by weight is standard. Neapolitan traditionally uses 3% (~28 g per kg of flour); American NY style runs 2–2.5%; whole-grain doughs tolerate 2.5–3% for flavor balance. Below 1.5% the dough tastes flat and ferments uncontrollably fast; above 3.5% it suppresses yeast activity and tastes salty. Use fine sea salt or fine kosher salt, dissolved into the water before mixing for even distribution. Yeast: dramatically less than most home recipes suggest. For instant dry yeast (IDY): 0.1–0.2% for 48–72 h cold ferment (the standard for developed flavor); 0.3–0.5% for 24 h cold; 0.7–1.0% for same-day 4–6 h room-temp ferment; 1–2% only for very fast 1–2 h doughs. For fresh yeast, multiply by ~3. Active dry yeast, multiply by ~1.25 vs IDY and proof in warm water first. Modern guidance favors much less yeast and much longer fermentation than older recipes — the result is dramatically better flavor and texture.
What are the most common pizza dough mistakes?
The biggest is too much yeast and too short a fermentation — yields fast dough but flat flavor and gummy texture. The second is over-flouring during shaping; flour absorbed at the shaping stage stays in the crust and tastes raw. The third is rolling instead of hand-stretching; rolling collapses the gas bubbles you spent hours developing and produces a denser crust. The fourth is not preheating long enough — a baking steel needs 45–60 minutes at maximum oven temperature to store sufficient heat for the bottom char; less than 30 minutes produces a pale soggy base. The fifth is overloading toppings; a great pizza has a thin layer of high-quality sauce, judicious cheese, and 2–3 toppings, not a pile that prevents heat from reaching the dough. The sixth is using too-low protein flour for high-hydration dough (AP flour fails above ~65% hydration); use bread flour or Italian 00 flour for 65%+ hydration. The seventh is bulk-fermenting at the wrong temperature — 75–78 °F is the dough's sweet spot; colder is slower (cold ferment in the fridge), warmer rushes flavor.
When should I not use this calculator?
Skip it for non-yeasted dough styles (cracker crusts using baking powder, or no-knead express doughs) where baker's percentages do not match the formula. It is the wrong tool for sourdough-based pizza where a starter contributes flour and water that must be subtracted from the totals; use a sourdough-aware calculator like pizzapp or the Pizza-Making.com calculator. Do not use it for stuffed/deep-dish styles (Chicago, Detroit, Sicilian) where dough recipes include oil, sometimes eggs or milk, and different hydration logic; those have specialized formulas. For gluten-free pizza, baker's percentages still apply but ingredient densities and hydration tolerances differ dramatically — use a GF-specific recipe. And for commercial production at scale, factor in dough handling losses (5–10%) and over-portion slightly; this calculator assumes 100% yield.