Pizza Dough Calculator: Flour, Water, Salt and Yeast

It uses baker's percentage (a convention where every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, with the flour itself always 100%), which is how bakeries scale recipes without re-deriving them. Wikipedia's summary of baker's percentage covers the wider convention if you want the background.

The awkward part is that you usually know the finished dough weight rather than the flour weight. Four 250g balls means 1,000g of dough - but that 1,000g already contains the water, salt and yeast, so you cannot simply take 60% of it for water.

Working backwards is one line. If hydration, salt and yeast are h, s and y expressed as decimals, then total dough = flour x (1 + h + s + y), so:

flour = total dough / (1 + h + s + y)

With the defaults above: 1,000 / (1 + 0.60 + 0.028 + 0.002) = 613g of flour. Water is then 60% of 613g, salt 2.8% of it, and so on. The parts add back up to your original 1,000g, which is the check worth doing if you ever calculate a batch by hand.

Hydration is the water weight as a percentage of the flour weight, and it is the single number that changes how the dough behaves in your hands.

Lower hydration, around 55-58%, gives a firmer dough that is easier to shape and holds its edge. It is what the traditional Neapolitan ratios land on: roughly 1 litre of water to 1.7-1.8kg of flour works out at about 57%.

Higher hydration, 63-70%, gives a slacker, stickier dough that opens into a lighter, more open crumb with bigger bubbles in the cornicione. It also sticks to the peel, tears more easily and punishes slow launching.

If you are still building confidence, 58-60% is the sweet spot. It is forgiving enough to shape without a fight and wet enough to puff properly at pizza-oven temperatures. Move up in single percentage points once launching is reliable, not before.

Flour matters here too. Type 00 and strong white bread flours absorb more water than plain flour, so the same hydration figure produces a noticeably wetter dough if you drop to a weaker flour.

Salt sits between 2.5% and 3% of flour weight in almost every Neapolitan-style recipe, and the default of 2.8% is a safe middle. Salt is not only seasoning: it tightens the gluten and slows fermentation, so cutting it drastically leaves you with a slack dough that over-proves faster than you expect.

Yeast is the number to vary, because it is really a lever on time and temperature rather than on flavour. The calculator's 0.2% fresh yeast suits a same-day prove at normal room temperature. Push it lower for a long or warm ferment, higher for a short or cold one.

The three yeast forms are not interchangeable gram-for-gram. The calculator gives all three, using the common 3:1.5:1 ratio - so 3g of fresh yeast is about 1.5g of active dried or 1g of instant. Packets sometimes state their own conversion, and that beats any rule of thumb.

Yeast quantity, temperature and time are one system: raise any of the three and you can lower another. These are the combinations that work with the calculator's defaults as a starting point.

Both are preferments: a portion of the flour, water and yeast mixed ahead of time and left to ferment before it joins the main dough. They build flavour and extensibility that a straight dough of the same length does not get.

A poolish (a wet preferment, equal weights of flour and water, so 100% hydration) is the easier of the two to handle. Take 20-30% of the calculator's flour, mix it with the same weight of water and a pinch of the yeast, and leave it at room temperature until it domes and just begins to fall - typically 12-16 hours. Then mix in the remaining flour, water, salt and yeast.

A biga (a stiff preferment, usually 45-50% hydration) is drier, ferments more slowly and pushes the flavour further, but it needs a mixer or determined hands to bring together.

The important bookkeeping point: the flour and water in a preferment come out of the totals the calculator gives you, they are not added on top. Take the poolish quantities from the flour and water figures, and the finished dough weight stays the same.

If you are making your first few pizzas, skip both. A straight dough with a long cold prove gets you most of the way, and our Neapolitan dough guide for beginners walks through that version step by step.