Can anyone point me to a resource that helps me understand the math behind the dough— eg hydration %, poolish % , how many dough balls, etc. I know I can get a pizza calculator but just want tom understand what it’s calculating.
by TPWPNY16
16 Comments
shockwave_supernova
I’m getting there myself, try the book Flour Water Salt Yeast. It has detailed explanations of technique, methods of preparation, there are recipe tables with percentage breakdowns, and it will teach you about all kinds of bread, not just pizza.
12panel
Hydration % is bakers percentage of water to flour. So 60% hydration is 60grams water with 100 grams flour.
For 1000 grams of dough, If you use a doughball of 333grams for a 14inch pizza you’ll get 3 pizzas, if you use a 250gram for a 12inch pizza you’ll get 4 pizzas.
For the poolish, follow the poolish instructions and then subtract each part from the main recipe so as to not double count the same ingredients twice.
Paul102000
Hydration ist how many water compared to flower. If you have 1kg of flour and 700gramm of water you have 70% hydration. I myself make on pizza 270gramm so you can make 1,7kg/270=6,2 pizzas out of that. With polish you have a percentage of all the flour. So if you have a 30% poolish dough it means you mixed 300gramms of water with 300gramm of flour if you have 1kg of flour in total.
CorneliusNepos
It’s all based on a percentage of the other ingredients against the total of flour you’re using. So 75g water and 100g flour is 75% hydration. When you plan, add up all your ingredients and make sure you have the right amount of hydration and percentages for each ingredient at the final stage. When you add up all the ingredients in weight, you can divide it by the size of doughball you want.
pizza making is like 90% dough making. understanding the fundamentals of dough, fermentation etc. its the same principles as making dough for bread.
blindloomis
Bakers percentages confused me for a long time, but like most everything else, I discovered that it is a very simple concept. The hydration and all other ingredients are a percentage of the amount of flour being used. If you use 100 grams of flour and want 60% hydration, you use 60 grams of water. There are online calculators and apps to do the math for you.
I no longer use a recipe. I just decide how much dough I want and plug it into the calculator, with the water percentage, along with the percentage of yeast and salt.
You may want to start around 60% and work your way up from there because the dough starts getting very sticky above 65% and you have to handle the dough differently. Higher hydration will give you a more airy crust and better chew, imo.
zole2112
I keep my pizza crust recipes on a spreadsheet then I can track my changes and easily scale up or down the crust diameter.
senoto
It’s all very simple, as it’s just the percentage of that Ingredient by weight compared to the total weight of the flour in the dough. It gets more confusing when talking about starters and pre ferments. When measuring those the bakers percentage used is the amount of flour in that pre ferment or starter compared to the total amount of flour, not the entire weight of the pre ferment. For example adding 100 grams of sourdough starter that consists of 50/50 flour and water into a dough that will have 500 grams of flour total is not 20% starter, it’s 10% starter. You also have to subtract the amount of flour and water in your pre ferment from the total amount of flour and water you want in the dough when you add the rest of it in. Using pre ferments add a lot more math but once you do it one time if you just write down the amounts for each step it’s fairly easy.
Rhiquire
Thoughts on my numbers it happened through trial and error but I came up with this
Bread flour 600g Water 68% Oil 3% Sugar 2% Salt 2.8% Yeast .4%
Edit: this dough cold ferment for 72hrs
Only issue is my previous dough batch didn’t seem to want to one rise on the crust, and two stretch that easily. The dough also seemed to have an interesting beer scent upon opening containers. I don’t know if it’s a time issue, or if it was my kneading technique.
16 Comments
I’m getting there myself, try the book Flour Water Salt Yeast. It has detailed explanations of technique, methods of preparation, there are recipe tables with percentage breakdowns, and it will teach you about all kinds of bread, not just pizza.
Hydration % is bakers percentage of water to flour. So 60% hydration is 60grams water with 100 grams flour.
For 1000 grams of dough, If you use a doughball of 333grams for a 14inch pizza you’ll get 3 pizzas, if you use a 250gram for a 12inch pizza you’ll get 4 pizzas.
For the poolish, follow the poolish instructions and then subtract each part from the main recipe so as to not double count the same ingredients twice.
Hydration ist how many water compared to flower. If you have 1kg of flour and 700gramm of water you have 70% hydration. I myself make on pizza 270gramm so you can make 1,7kg/270=6,2 pizzas out of that. With polish you have a percentage of all the flour. So if you have a 30% poolish dough it means you mixed 300gramms of water with 300gramm of flour if you have 1kg of flour in total.
It’s all based on a percentage of the other ingredients against the total of flour you’re using. So 75g water and 100g flour is 75% hydration. When you plan, add up all your ingredients and make sure you have the right amount of hydration and percentages for each ingredient at the final stage. When you add up all the ingredients in weight, you can divide it by the size of doughball you want.
[https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php](https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php) is a great forum for pizza making. its been around for 10+ years.
also, [https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/](https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/)
pizza making is like 90% dough making. understanding the fundamentals of dough, fermentation etc. its the same principles as making dough for bread.
Bakers percentages confused me for a long time, but like most everything else, I discovered that it is a very simple concept. The hydration and all other ingredients are a percentage of the amount of flour being used. If you use 100 grams of flour and want 60% hydration, you use 60 grams of water. There are online calculators and apps to do the math for you.
I no longer use a recipe. I just decide how much dough I want and plug it into the calculator, with the water percentage, along with the percentage of yeast and salt.
You may want to start around 60% and work your way up from there because the dough starts getting very sticky above 65% and you have to handle the dough differently. Higher hydration will give you a more airy crust and better chew, imo.
I keep my pizza crust recipes on a spreadsheet then I can track my changes and easily scale up or down the crust diameter.
It’s all very simple, as it’s just the percentage of that Ingredient by weight compared to the total weight of the flour in the dough. It gets more confusing when talking about starters and pre ferments. When measuring those the bakers percentage used is the amount of flour in that pre ferment or starter compared to the total amount of flour, not the entire weight of the pre ferment. For example adding 100 grams of sourdough starter that consists of 50/50 flour and water into a dough that will have 500 grams of flour total is not 20% starter, it’s 10% starter. You also have to subtract the amount of flour and water in your pre ferment from the total amount of flour and water you want in the dough when you add the rest of it in. Using pre ferments add a lot more math but once you do it one time if you just write down the amounts for each step it’s fairly easy.
Thoughts on my numbers it happened through trial and error but I came up with this
Bread flour 600g
Water 68%
Oil 3%
Sugar 2%
Salt 2.8%
Yeast .4%
Edit: this dough cold ferment for 72hrs
Only issue is my previous dough batch didn’t seem to want to one rise on the crust, and two stretch that easily. The dough also seemed to have an interesting beer scent upon opening containers. I don’t know if it’s a time issue, or if it was my kneading technique.
Would love some pointers
[https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bakers-percentage](https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bakers-percentage)
https://www.thepizzabubble.com
Have a read, you got an ingredient calculator and hydration
How does pizza like that taste? I wanna try pizza like that so baddd whats it called again? Neopolitian?
Somebody linked this in another thread and it’s a fun little tool
https://pizzadoughcalculator.vercel.app/calculator
there’s an app version of it as well.
I have my dough pretty nailed down, but I do still go back to this every now and again if i ever want to tweak anything / experiment
You mean… Pizza pi?
The best thing for the individual is to keep notes in a dedicated book. Keep track of everything in weight as it’s more accurate.
Perfect nothing like something well done