Pizza Dough Calculator

What is baker's percentage?

In baker's percentage, every ingredient is expressed as a ratio relative to the total flour weight, which is always 100%. This makes scaling recipes trivial — if you want twice the dough, double the flour and all other ingredients stay proportional automatically.

For example, a Neapolitan dough at 60% hydration with 500 g flour means 300 g water (500 × 0.60). Salt at 2.5% means 12.5 g salt. This percentage system is universal in professional bakeries worldwide.

Pizza style differences

• Neapolitan (60%) — The classic Vera Pizza Napoletana. Low hydration gives a tight, workable dough that chars beautifully at 450 °C+ in a wood-fired oven.
• New York (65%) — Slightly higher hydration for a larger, foldable slice. Still hand-tossed, baked at lower temperatures on deck ovens.
• Detroit (70%) — A thick, pan-pressed style baked in well-oiled steel pans. Higher hydration gives the signature open, airy crumb.
• Focaccia (80%) — More bread than pizza. Very high hydration produces a pillowy, olive-oil-drenched flatbread that spreads rather than being shaped.

Hydration by Pizza Style

• Neapolitan (VPN standard): 55–62% — Thin, charred crust baked at 450–500 °C in 60–90 seconds. Very tight crumb, pliable texture. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana specifies dough at 55–62% hydration with 00-type flour for this reason.
• New York style: 60–65% — Bakes at 260–290 °C in 10–14 minutes. Foldable, slightly chewy crust. This is the most forgiving range for home ovens, which rarely exceed 260 °C.
• Roman al taglio (pan pizza): 70–80% — Very wet, sticky dough baked in oiled pans. Open, airy crumb with a crispy bottom. Requires stretch-and-fold technique rather than traditional kneading.
• Detroit style: 65–70% — High-edge pan pizza baked in dark steel pans. Higher hydration gives the signature open crumb and crispy cheese-edged bottom. The thick pan traps steam, compensating for the lower hydration.
• Whole wheat or high-fiber flours: add 3–5% more water per 10% whole grain substitution. Bran particles absorb significantly more water than white flour, so a 50% whole wheat blend may need an extra 15–25% hydration to achieve the same dough feel.
• Higher hydration = more difficult to handle, but produces a more open, airy crumb and better crust blistering in home ovens. A steel baking plate preheated for 45–60 minutes at maximum temperature partially offsets the lower temperature of home ovens.

Related tools: Sourdough Hydration Calculator, Recipe Scaler, Yeast Conversion Calculator, and Coffee Water Ratio.

Fermentation Time and Temperature

• Cold fermentation (4 °C fridge): 24–72 hours — Develops complex flavor, easier to handle, more forgiving. Preferred by most artisan pizzerias. The slow enzymatic activity breaks down complex sugars and proteins, resulting in a more digestible crust with nuanced flavor.
• Room temperature fermentation (21 °C): 2–4 hours — Fast, less flavor development, more monitoring required. Suitable for same-day pizza but results in a blander, less complex crust. Ideal when you forgot to plan ahead.
• Yeast quantity matters: Cold-ferment dough uses much less yeast (0.1–0.3% of flour weight) than same-day dough (0.5–1%). Higher yeast combined with a long fermentation will over-proof, producing a collapsed, sour dough with poor structure.
• Signs of over-proofing: Dough does not spring back when poked (finger indentation stays), collapses easily when stretched, smells strongly acidic or alcoholic, bakes flat with large burst bubbles.
• Signs of under-proofing: Tight, resistant dough that tears when stretched, dense crumb without air pockets, cracker-like crust with no chew. The gluten network has not had enough time to relax and the yeast has not produced enough CO₂.

Frequently Asked Questions