Pizza Dough Calculator
Pick a style below to load its traditional density, hydration, and salt defaults, then set your pizza count and size. This calculator scales by area, not just diameter, since dough needs to cover the whole surface, not just span across it.
Pizza styles
Density and hydration are genuine ranges across sources, not single fixed numbers. These are reasonable defaults you can adjust.
| Ingredient | Weight |
|---|---|
| Water | 0g |
| Salt | 0g |
| Yeast | 0g |
| Starter | 0g |
| Oil | 0g |
| Dough ball weight (each) | 0g |
| Total dough weight | 0g |
| Per pizza | Amount |
|---|---|
| Dough ball weight | 0g |
| Flour | 0g |
| Water | 0g |
| Salt | 0g |
How this is calculated
This works in two steps. First, dough ball weight comes from the pizza's surface area (not just its diameter) times a density factor that varies by style, since a thick Detroit crust needs a lot more dough per square inch than a thin Roman one. Second, once you know your total dough weight across every pizza, the ingredients are worked out using standard baker's percentage math: flour weight is solved from the total, then everything else scales off that. If you're building a poolish or biga first, that step happens separately, on the Preferment Calculator, before the numbers come back here. For the flour itself, "00," bread flour, and all-purpose behave differently, see the Flour Substitution Guide for the protein-content reasoning.
The "I have dough on hand" mode above runs the same area-and-density math in reverse: instead of solving for a ball weight from a size, it starts from a known amount of dough and solves for either the size you can make or how many pizzas that amount stretches to.
Worked example
Two 12-inch Neapolitan pizzas: each pizza's surface area is about 113 square inches, times a density of 2.2g per square inch, gives a dough ball of about 249g, in line with the 220-280g range real Neapolitan 12-inch pizzas typically use. For two pizzas that's roughly 498g of total dough. At 62% hydration and 2.5% salt, that works out to about 302g flour, 187g water, and 8g salt, plus a small amount of yeast depending on your fermentation schedule. That's exactly what the calculator above returns once you fill in the fields.
Oven temperature and bake time by style
| Style | Home oven setup | Bake time |
|---|---|---|
| Neapolitan | 500-550°F with steel/stone, broiler-assisted | 4-7 min |
| New York | 500-550°F on a steel | 5-8 min |
| Detroit | 475-500°F in a steel pan | 12-18 min |
| Sicilian / Pan | 450-500°F in an oiled pan | 12-20 min |
| Roman / Thin | 500-550°F on a steel | 5-8 min |
These are home-oven-adapted ranges, not professional deck-oven numbers. Sources disagree by a wide margin depending on equipment, so treat these as a starting point and adjust based on how your own oven and steel or stone actually perform.
Frequently asked questions
How much pizza will a pound of dough make?
How much dough do I need per pizza?
How much yeast for a 24-hour cold ferment?
Can I use sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast?
Can I use this calculator with a poolish or biga?
How this is checked. Dough-ball density factors and fermentation-schedule yeast percentages on this page are ranges compiled from multiple independent pizza-making references, not a single source's numbers presented as universal fact. Real disagreement exists across sources on exact figures for the same style and size. Where sources disagreed meaningfully, this page uses the middle of the commonly-cited range rather than picking the most convenient number. Oven temperature and bake time guidance is compiled the same way, adapted specifically for home ovens rather than professional deck ovens, since those numbers differ substantially.