What is baker's percentage in a pizza dough calculator?

Baker's percentage expresses every ingredient as a percentage of the flour's weight, with flour always fixed at 100%. If a recipe uses 1000g of flour and 650g of water, the dough is 65% hydration — regardless of how many total pizzas that makes. This is why professional recipes (and every real pizza dough calculator) work in percentages instead of cups: it lets you scale a recipe up or down to any batch size while keeping the exact same dough character.

What hydration percentage should I use for pizza dough?

It depends on the style you're making. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana's own disciplinare specifies 55-62% hydration for true Neapolitan dough. Ooni's dough-hydration guide puts New York-style around 65%, and Detroit or pan-style dough — which needs to be slack enough to spread into the corners of a pan — at 70-80%. Lower hydration is stiffer and easier to shape by hand; higher hydration is stickier to work with but bakes into a more open, airy crumb.

How do I calculate flour and water for a specific number of pizzas?

Start with your target: how many dough balls, and what weight each. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana's standard is 250-280g per 12-inch ball. Multiply balls x weight for your total dough weight, then divide by (1 + hydration% + salt% + yeast%) to get your flour weight — multiply that flour weight by each ingredient's percentage to get water, salt, and yeast. See the worked example table on this page for the exact math at 58% and 65% hydration.

Do I need a scale to use a pizza dough calculator?

Yes — baker's percentage only works with weight, not volume. A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from about 120g to 150g depending on how it's scooped and packed, which throws off every ratio in the calculation. A digital kitchen scale accurate to at least 1g (ideally 0.1g for salt and yeast) is the only physical tool a pizza dough calculator actually requires.

Why does my dough feel too sticky even though I followed the calculator?

Higher-hydration dough (65%+) is supposed to feel tacky and slack compared to a stiffer 58-60% Neapolitan dough — that stickiness is what produces an open, airy crumb once baked, per pizza-hydration guidance from Ooni and Gozney. If it's unworkable rather than just tacky, the most common cause is flour protein content: lower-protein all-purpose flour holds less water than a 12.5-13.5% protein Tipo 00 flour, so the same percentage can feel wetter. Wetting your hands instead of adding flour to the dough (which changes the ratio) is the standard fix.

Pizza Dough Calculator: How to Get Flour, Water and Salt Right for Any Style (2026)

Quick Answer: A pizza dough calculator is really just baker’s percentage — flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient is a percentage of that flour’s weight. Pick a hydration target for your style (55-62% for AVPN Neapolitan, ~65% for New York, 70-80% for Detroit or pan-style, per Ooni’s own dough-hydration guide), decide how many dough balls you need at 250-280g each, then do the math: total dough weight ÷ (1 + hydration% + salt% + yeast%) = flour weight, and every other ingredient scales off that. A digital kitchen scale is the only physical tool the math actually requires.

Every “pizza dough calculator” online — including the free one on Ooni’s own site — is doing the same handful of multiplications behind a nicer interface. Once you understand the formula, you can hit any dough-ball count or hydration target without a calculator at all, and you’ll immediately understand why two recipes that look completely different (a stiff Neapolitan ball vs. a slack Detroit-style slab) are really just the same math at different ratios.

Pizza dough math, by the numbers

55-62%: the hydration range the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana’s own disciplinare specifies for true Neapolitan dough — 1,600-1,800g flour per liter of water.
~65%: typical New York-style hydration, per Ooni’s dough-hydration guide — soft and extensible rather than stiff.
70-80%: Detroit and pan-style hydration, per the same Ooni guide — slack, sticky dough that spreads into the corners of a pan and bakes into an open, airy crumb.
250-280g: the AVPN’s standard dough-ball weight for a 12-inch Neapolitan pizza (250-260g is most common).

The formula

Baker’s percentage: (ingredient weight ÷ flour weight) x 100 = percentage. Flour is always 100% by definition. So a dough with 1000g flour and 650g water is 65% hydration; add 20g salt and that’s 2% salt.

To go the other direction — from a target dough weight to actual gram amounts — rearrange it:

Flour weight = total dough weight ÷ (1 + hydration% + salt% + yeast%)

Once you have the flour weight, multiply it by each ingredient’s percentage to get water, salt, and yeast in grams.

Worked example: 4 dough balls, two styles

Say you want four 260g dough balls — a total dough weight of 1,040g. Here’s what that looks like at AVPN Neapolitan hydration (58%, salt 2.8%, minimal yeast for a long ferment) versus New York-style (65%, salt 2%, more yeast for a same-day rise):

Style	Hydration	Flour	Water	Salt	Yeast
Neapolitan (58%)	58%	646g	375g	18g	~0.6g (24hr ferment)
New York (65%)	65%	621g	404g	12g	~3g (same-day rise)

Both rows produce the same total dough weight and the same four balls — the only thing that changes is the ratio. Want six balls instead of four? Change 1,040g to whatever six 260g balls add up to and run the same division. That’s the entire trick behind every pizza dough calculator.

Digital Kitchen Scale (0.1g Resolution)

The one tool this math actually requires · from ~$15

Baker's percentage only works with weight — a cup of flour can vary 120-150g depending on how it's scooped, which throws off every ratio above.
0.1g resolution matters most for salt and yeast, where a few grams either way changes fermentation speed and taste.
Cheaper and more useful long-term than any app or printed chart — every pizza dough calculator on earth is built around a scale, not instead of one.

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Hydration by style, at a glance

Style	Hydration	Feel	Source
Neapolitan	55-62%	Stiff, easy to hand-shape	AVPN disciplinare
New York	~65%	Soft, extensible	Ooni dough-hydration guide
Detroit / pan-style	70-80%	Slack, sticky, spreads in the pan	Ooni dough-hydration guide
Sicilian	70-75%	Open, airy crumb	Ooni dough-hydration guide

FAQ

See the questions below for how the percentages convert to grams, why volume measurements (cups) don’t work for this math, and what to do if your dough feels wrong even after following the numbers.

Bottom line: a pizza dough calculator isn’t a special tool — it’s baker’s percentage, where flour is 100% and everything else is a ratio of it. Nail the hydration for your style, weigh instead of scooping, and the same formula scales from two dough balls to twenty. For the actual dough technique once your numbers are set, see our Neapolitan pizza dough recipe; to give the finished balls a proper cold ferment, check our best pizza dough proofing box roundup; and if you’re kneading by machine instead of hand, our best stand mixer for pizza dough guide covers the low-speed settings that protect gluten development.