Pizza Dough Generator

Your pizza dough, worked out.

Choose a style, your oven and how long you can wait. It works out the quantities, the baker's percentages and a method that fits your kitchen.

1 Style

Pizzas, 25–30 cm each.

68%

The usual hydration for this style.

4 Oven
5 Schedule

Longer, colder rises build more flavour.

6 Fine-tuning optional

15–30°C. Leave empty for a typical 22°C kitchen. Warmer rooms get less yeast, cooler rooms more.

Makes 30% of the flour into a pre-ferment the day before, for more flavour and an airier crumb.

See the recipe

Your recipe

2 Neapolitan pizzas

Method

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      Dough timer

      00:00:00

      Keeps running if you close the tab.

      Notes from the kitchen

      Ingredient substitutions
      '00' flour
      Use bread flour (12–13% protein). Slightly less tender, still excellent.
      Instant yeast
      Active dry yeast works 1:1, but dissolve it in warm water for 5 minutes first.
      Fresh yeast
      Use three times the instant yeast weight; fresh yeast holds more moisture.
      Fine sea salt
      Table salt is denser: use 10–15% less. Kosher salt: use 25% more.
      No scale?
      Switch to cups & oz above. One cup of flour is about 125 g, one cup of water about 237 g. A scale is still the best £15 you'll spend on pizza.
      Troubleshooting
      Dough is too sticky
      Resist adding flour. Use a bench scraper and wet hands, and a few more stretch and folds to build strength.
      Dough isn't rising
      The yeast may be old or the room too cold. Move it somewhere warmer, and check the water wasn't hot enough to kill the yeast.
      Crust is dense, not airy
      It was probably overworked, or the air was pressed out while stretching. Be gentle at the end.
      Handling the dough
      Be gentle
      The dough is full of gas from fermentation. Shape it without pressing out those bubbles.
      Use your fingertips
      Press from the centre, leaving a 2.5 cm (1 in) border untouched. That border becomes the cornicione.
      The steering wheel
      Drape the dough over your knuckles and turn it, letting gravity do the stretching.
      No rolling pin
      It crushes the air pockets and gives a flat, dense crust.
      Let it warm up
      30–60 minutes at room temperature before stretching makes it far easier to handle.
      Glossary
      '00' flour
      Finely milled Italian flour that gives a soft, tender crust.
      Hydration
      Water as a percentage of flour weight. Higher means stickier dough and an airier crust.
      Baker's percentage
      Every ingredient as a percentage of the flour, so the recipe scales to any size.
      Poolish
      A pre-ferment of equal flour and water with a little yeast, left for 12–16 hours to build flavour and structure.
      Pre-ferment
      Part of the dough made ahead and fermented first. Poolish, biga and sourdough starter are all pre-ferments.
      Bulk fermentation
      The first rise, after mixing and kneading.
      Proofing
      The final rise, after the dough is shaped into balls.
      Cornicione
      The puffy outer rim of a pizza.
      Windowpane test
      Stretch a small piece thin: if light shows through without it tearing, the gluten is developed.