How do you calculate pizza dough from baker’s percentages?

Add every percentage together, flour included. For 65% hydration and 2% salt that is 100 + 65 + 2 = 167%. Divide your target dough weight by that total and multiply by 100 to get the flour weight, then take each other ingredient as its percentage of that flour. A 1,670g batch gives 1,000g flour, 650g water and 20g salt.

How much does a pizza dough ball weigh?

It depends on the diameter and how thick you want the base. Multiply the pizza’s area by a dough density: roughly 0.40 g/cm² for Neapolitan and 0.44 g/cm² for New York. A 30cm Neapolitan works out at about 283g.

How do I convert fresh yeast to instant dry yeast?

Divide by three. The conventional bakery ratio is fresh : active dry : instant of 3 : 1.33 : 1, so 9g of fresh yeast is about 3g of instant dry or 4g of active dry.

What hydration should pizza dough be?

Neapolitan sits around 55–62%, New York around 60–65%, and Roman teglia as high as 75–85%. Higher hydration gives a more open crumb but slacker dough that is harder to handle by hand.

How much flour goes into a poolish?

A poolish typically takes 20–40% of the total flour at 100% hydration, meaning equal weights of flour and water. That flour and water come out of the main recipe rather than being added to it, so the final dough weight does not change.

Tool

Pizza Dough Calculator

To scale a pizza dough, add every baker’s percentage together with flour at 100%, divide your target dough weight by that total, and multiply by 100 — that gives the flour weight, and every other ingredient follows from it. At 65% hydration and 2% salt, a 1,670g batch is exactly 1,000g flour, 650g water and 20g salt.

Set the number of balls and their weight below and the calculator does the inversion for you, including preferments and yeast conversions.

Style

NeapolitanSoft, fast-baked, puffed rim. No oil and no sugar — flour, water, salt and yeast only.New YorkFoldable, chewy, a little richer. Oil and sugar help it brown in a domestic oven.Roman tegliaVery wet, baked in a tray, open and airy. Handled with wet hands, not a rolling pin.Detroit panThick, light and square, baked in an oiled steel pan for a fried, crisp base.

Typical bake temperature for Neapolitan

0°F800–950°F1000°F

How much dough

Size by

Ball weightPizza diameterPan size

Number of balls

Ball weight

Baker’s percentages

Hydration

Water as a percentage of flour.

Salt

Oil

Sugar

Yeast

Entered as instant dry. Converted below.

Yeast you have

Use a preferment

Your recipe

1000g of dough · 159.96% total

Ingredient weights and baker’s percentages
Ingredient	Weight	Baker’s
Flour	625g	100.0%
Water	356g	57.0%
Salt	18.1g	2.9%
Instant dry yeast	0.4g	0.06%
Total	999.5g

Yeast, whichever you have

Instant dry0.4g
Active dry0.5g
Fresh1.2g

Yeast comes to 0.4g, below what most kitchen scales resolve. Scale the batch up, or measure with a 0.01g scale.

How the maths works

In baker’s percentages, flour is always 100% and every other ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight. That makes recipes scale cleanly, but it means you cannot read the flour weight straight off a target batch size — you have to invert it.

Add all the percentages together, flour included. Call that total S. For a target dough weight T:

flour = T × 100 / S

Everything else is then a percentage of that flour. Four 250g Neapolitan balls come to 1,000g of dough; at 60% hydration, 2.5% salt and 0.2% yeast, S is 162.7, so the flour is 1,000 × 100 / 162.7 = 615g, the water is 369g, the salt is 15.4g and the yeast is 1.2g.

The calculator rounds the flour to the nearest gram first and derives everything else from that rounded figure, so the percentages hold exactly against the flour you actually weigh out. That can leave the batch a gram or two off your target, which is under a gram per ball — it tells you when that happens rather than hiding it.

Where these numbers come from

The arithmetic above is exact and you can check it with a calculator. The style presets are a different kind of thing: they are conventional starting points, not measurements, and you should treat them as a place to begin rather than a target to hit.

The Neapolitan preset is the exception — it is derived from a published specification rather than from convention.

Common questions

How do you calculate pizza dough from baker’s percentages?: Add every percentage together, flour included. For 65% hydration and 2% salt that is 100 + 65 + 2 = 167%. Divide your target dough weight by that total and multiply by 100 to get the flour weight, then take each other ingredient as its percentage of that flour. A 1,670g batch gives 1,000g flour, 650g water and 20g salt.
How much does a pizza dough ball weigh?: It depends on the diameter and how thick you want the base. Multiply the pizza’s area by a dough density: roughly 0.40 g/cm² for Neapolitan and 0.44 g/cm² for New York. A 30cm Neapolitan works out at about 283g.
How do I convert fresh yeast to instant dry yeast?: Divide by three. The conventional bakery ratio is fresh : active dry : instant of 3 : 1.33 : 1, so 9g of fresh yeast is about 3g of instant dry or 4g of active dry.
What hydration should pizza dough be?: Neapolitan sits around 55–62%, New York around 60–65%, and Roman teglia as high as 75–85%. Higher hydration gives a more open crumb but slacker dough that is harder to handle by hand.
How much flour goes into a poolish?: A poolish typically takes 20–40% of the total flour at 100% hydration, meaning equal weights of flour and water. That flour and water come out of the main recipe rather than being added to it, so the final dough weight does not change.