Pizza Dough Calculator

It depends on time and temperature, not just the flour. A long, cool ferment needs only a pinch of yeast, while a quick same-day dough needs more. The calculator does this for you: enter your fermentation time and temperature and it gives the grams for instant, active dry or fresh yeast.

For a home oven, 58-62% is easy to handle and crisps up well. Neapolitan sits around 60-62%, while airy Roman tray pizza goes up to 75-80% and needs a gentler touch. Start lower if you are new to it and raise the hydration as you get comfortable.

Both work. A cold ferment (24-72 h in the fridge) develops more flavour and fits around your schedule; the calculator lowers the yeast to match. A room-temperature ferment is faster (a few hours) and needs more yeast. Set the temperature to about 4°C for the fridge or 20-22°C for room temperature.

A strong flour with good protein gives the best chew and rise. Italian 00 flour is classic for Neapolitan; strong white bread flour is great for New York, Roman and Detroit styles. Higher-hydration doughs especially benefit from a strong flour that can hold the water.

Just change the number of pizzas (and the ball weight if you want bigger or smaller pizzas). Because everything is calculated as a percentage of the flour, the dough stays perfectly balanced at any batch size.

Yes. Choose your yeast type and the calculator converts automatically: active dry yeast is roughly 40% of the weight of fresh yeast, and instant dry yeast about a third. So if a recipe lists fresh yeast, switch the type and use the gram amount shown.

Two different problems wear that same description. If you used the yeast figure from the calculator for a long ferment, it is not supposed to double - there is very little yeast in there and it works slowly. Look for a ball that is puffy and jiggly rather than twice the size. If it has done nothing at all, and it feels wet and slack with it, your yeast is probably dead. Tick the proofing box in the calculator and you will know in ten minutes rather than after a wasted bag of flour.

No, and this is the single most common mistake people make. Freshly mixed dough looks like a shaggy, sticky mess, and it is meant to. Cover it and walk away for 20 to 30 minutes while the flour drinks the water in. Come back and it will be smooth and manageable without you doing anything. Adding flour at that stage gives you a dry, tight base. If it is still tacky when you shape it, wet your hands and use a scraper rather than dusting more flour in.

Two days in the fridge is the sweet spot. One day is good, two is better, and by day three it starts to taste alcoholic and sour and goes slack to shape. Four days is the practical limit whatever flour you use. At room temperature, with the small amount of yeast this calculator gives you, about sixteen hours is the ceiling before the balls spread flat instead of holding their shape.

Yes, and it freezes well. Divide and ball it first, then freeze the balls on a lightly oiled tray, not touching, until they are firm before you bag them individually. Freeze them touching and you will be prising them apart later. To thaw in a hurry, put the wrapped ball in warm - not hot - water for ten to fifteen minutes, then let it finish on a covered tray. One thing most recipes leave out: once thawed, do not let it prove more than about four hours, or the dough goes weak and tears when you stretch it.

It is, but you have to work around it. The trick that changes everything in a UK kitchen is to skip the oven floor altogether: get a frying pan screaming hot, cook the base in it for about two minutes, top it, then slide it under the grill on full for another two. You get fierce heat underneath and above in quick succession, which is what a pizza oven does and what a domestic oven on its own cannot. No stone, no steel, no special kit.

Neither, and the preheat matters far more than the kit. A stone needs 45 to 60 minutes at full heat to actually get there - the oven reaching temperature is not the same as the stone reaching temperature, and that gap is the commonest cause of a pale, floppy base. A steel gets there in 20 to 30 minutes and conducts heat better, which suits a cooler home oven. With neither, preheat a heavy baking tray upside down, or use the frying pan method above.

Check the protein figure on the bag first. “00” describes how finely the flour is milled, not how strong it is - McDougalls 00 Extra Fine is only 10.2% protein and is really pasta flour. UK bakers regularly report supermarket 00 tearing on shaping after a long proof. If you want 00, look for a bag that says pizza, or W260 and above. Otherwise strong white bread flour is the safer choice in a home oven and it browns better below 300°C, with Allinson Very Strong at 14% the one to reach for if you are going past a day.

Not in practice. It only becomes a problem if you leave salt and yeast sitting in direct contact for several minutes before anything else goes in. Add them at the same time and stir, and nothing goes wrong. Keeping them on opposite sides of the bowl does no harm, but it is not the make-or-break step it is often made out to be.

It is either under-fermented or simply too cold, and the answer is patience rather than force. Stretch it a little, walk away for five or ten minutes, then come back and stretch again. Repeat until it stays where you put it. If it has just come out of the fridge, give it one to three hours at room temperature before you start. Fighting a tight dough only tears it.

Every ingredient is written as a percentage of the flour, and the flour is always 100%. So 65% hydration means 650 g of water for every 1000 g of flour, and 2% salt means 20 g. It sounds fussy, but it is what lets you scale a recipe to any number of pizzas without the ratios drifting - which is exactly what the calculator is doing for you above.