Pizza dough calculator: hydration, yeast, schedule
Pizza dough is worked out as a percentage of the flour weight: flour is 100%, water 55–70%, salt 2–3%, yeast well under 1%. The only genuinely awkward variable is the yeast, because it depends on both how long the dough ferments and how warm your kitchen is.
The kitchen, not the fridge.
Hour of the day, 0–23.
Before balling up.
Flour
5.97 kg
Water
3.88 kg
65%
Salt
149 g
2.5%
Fresh yeast
4.6 g
0.077% · dried: 1.5 g
The schedule
- Mix the dough
- 7pm, the day before
- Ball up
- 9pm, the day before
- Balls readyafter 22 h proving
- 7pm, same day
40 balls of 250 g — 10.00 kg of dough in total.
How the calculation works
Everything is in bakers' percentages: flour is 100%, and every other ingredient is expressed against it. 65% hydration means 650 g of water per 1 kg of flour — not 65% of the total dough weight, which is the mistake almost everyone makes first.
So the flour weight is derived from the dough weight you want: flour = total ÷ (1 + hydration + salt + yeast), all as fractions.
Yeast, by time and temperature
This is the only part that needs a method. Two things matter: the longer the ferment, the less yeast you need; and the warmer it is, the faster it works. As a working approximation, activity roughly doubles every 8 °C.
| Temperature | 8 h | 12 h | 18 h | 24 h | 48 h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 °C | 0.327% | 0.218% | 0.145% | 0.109% | 0.055% |
| 18 °C | 0.275% | 0.183% | 0.122% | 0.092% | 0.046% |
| 20 °C | 0.231% | 0.154% | 0.103% | 0.077% | 0.039% |
| 22 °C | 0.194% | 0.130% | 0.086% | 0.065% | 0.032% |
| 25 °C | 0.150% | 0.100% | 0.067% | 0.050% | 0.025% |
| 28 °C | 0.116% | 0.077% | 0.051% | 0.039% | 0.019% |
Calculated with the formula below, calibrated against the reference points a pizzeria kitchen expects. For dried yeast, divide by 3.
The formula: yeast % = 2.2 ÷ (2^((T − 18) ÷ 8) × hours). It is published here so you can check it, not so it can be taken as authority.
Direct or poolish?
Direct means everything is mixed in one go. With a poolish you make an equal-parts flour-and-water preferment the day before with very little yeast, and fold it in the next day. A poolish buys extensibility and a deeper flavour; it costs you having to know your volumes a day in advance.
The calculator caps the poolish share at your hydration: beyond that there would be no water left for the final mix.
Recipes that use this calculator
- Neapolitan dough — the proportions from the AVPN standard, and what they mean in a real kitchen.
- Direct, poolish or biga — what each method buys you, and how to run a poolish.
- Dough for a van — lower hydration and a 48-hour cold ferment.
- Gluten-free dough — a different calculation entirely, with no gluten network to build.