Pizza Dough Calculator: Neapolitan, NY, Detroit & Sicilian (2026)

Every recipe below is built on baker's percentages — a simple system where flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient (water, salt, yeast, oil) is a percentage OF that flour weight. So "62% hydration" just means the water weighs 62% of what the flour weighs. It sounds fancy; it's really just ratios, the same idea as mixing paint or lemonade.

The reason this beats a fixed recipe ("500g flour, 320g water...") is that it scales perfectly. Making 2 pizzas or 12, the ratios — and the dough — stay exactly the same. That's the whole trick behind the calculator above: change the pizza count, and it just multiplies the same percentages up or down.

One rule that matters more than any percentage: weigh everything on a kitchen scale. A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 150 grams depending on how it's scooped, which is more wiggle room than your dough can forgive. A $10-15 digital scale is the single best upgrade you can make to your pizza game.

Neapolitan is the lean, high-heat style — just flour, water, salt, and yeast, no oil, made to blister and puff in 60-90 seconds at 900°F+. New York style adds a touch of oil for that chewy, foldable texture and runs at a friendlier 600-700°F. Both are shaped into round balls and stretched by hand.

Detroit and Sicilian are a different animal entirely: thicker, wetter doughs (70%+ hydration) that get pressed — not stretched — directly into an oiled pan, where they rise up the sides and fry a little at the edges. If Neapolitan is a sports car, Detroit is a pickup truck. Both get you where you're going; they just handle very differently.

The calculator switches all four ratios (and the default dough weight) automatically when you change styles, so you're never accidentally baking a Neapolitan recipe in a Detroit pan.

Every preset above assumes a same-day rise — mix it, let it rest 1.5-2 hours at room temperature, and you're baking that evening. It's the fastest path from flour to pizza, and it's perfectly good dough.

For noticeably better flavor with almost no extra effort, cold-ferment instead: make the dough, ball it up, and let it rest in the fridge for 24-72 hours before baking. The slow, cold rise breaks down the flour more thoroughly and builds a deeper, slightly tangy flavor you can't rush. The only change you need to make is cutting the yeast to roughly a quarter of the calculator's number — everything else stays the same. Pull the dough out about an hour before you bake so it can come back up to room temperature.

Neither method is "more correct." Same-day is for a Tuesday; cold-fermented is for when you've got the time and want to show off a little. Your pizza oven doesn't care which one you pick — it just wants dough that's actually ready when it hits the stone.

Flip the calculator's "Rise method" to Poolish or Biga and it splits your recipe into two stages instead of one: a small preferment you mix the night before, and the final dough you finish the next day. Both are old bakery tricks for building flavor without babysitting a rise all day, and both use barely a whisper of yeast — the long, slow sit does the heavy lifting.

Poolish is the easier of the two: equal parts flour and water (so it's pourable, almost like a thick pancake batter) using about a third of your total flour. Leave it out overnight and it'll be bubbly, domed, and smell faintly sour by morning. Biga is Poolish's stiffer cousin — it uses all of your flour at a much lower hydration, so it comes together shaggy and dry, more like a rough dough than a batter. Both get mixed into the remaining ingredients the next day to finish the dough.

Why bother? Flavor, mostly. A long, cool, slow ferment breaks the flour down more thoroughly than a same-day rise ever can, building a deeper, slightly complex taste that's hard to fake any other way. It's a bit more planning — you're committing to your pizza the night before — but the actual hands-on work is still just two short mixing sessions.