Baker’s percentage – calculate dough like a pizzaiolo
Once you understand baker's percentage, you can scale any recipe to the amount you need. A worked example using our 65% house dough, step by step, in grams.
Quick answer: baker’s percentage expresses everything in the recipe as a proportion of the flour weight (flour = 100 %). The house method is 100/65/2.8/~0.07 for flour/water/salt/yeast. Once you grasp the principle, you can scale any pizza recipe to exactly the amount of dough you need.
The worked example
Say you want to bake with 1000 g of flour. The water is then 650 g (65 %), the salt 28 g (2.8 %) and the fresh yeast about 0.7 g. If you would rather start from how many pizzas you are baking, you work backwards: ball weight × number of balls ÷ (1 + all the percentages) = the amount of flour. That is exactly the calculation the calculator does for you, but it is worth understanding the principle anyway – then you can adjust a recipe you find elsewhere without guessing.
Why percentages and not volume
Volume measures (cups, decilitres) are unreliable because flour packs differently depending on how it is scooped. Weight in grams plus baker’s percentage is the only method that gives the same result every time, however much dough you make. It is the same system professional bakeries use all over the world.
Read more about the role of hydration in the hydration guide and see the full house recipe in Neapolitan pizza dough.
