Pizza Dough Calculator and Planner

Tell DoughPlan when you want to eat. It works backwards from that time and gives you the ingredients in grams, how much yeast your fermentation needs and a clock-time schedule for every step, from mixing to switching the oven on. It is free, needs no account and runs entirely in your browser.

How to use the planner

1. Pick the time you want to eat. The default is next Saturday at 20:00. If that time is too close for the fermentation you choose, the planner tells you when you would have had to start.
2. Choose a style. Neapolitan (AVPN style, very hot oven), Neapolitan for a home oven or New York. Each style fills in hydration, salt, oil, sugar and dough ball weight. You can change any of them afterwards.
3. Set how many pizzas and, if you like, the weight of each dough ball.
4. Choose your yeast: instant dry, active dry or fresh (cake) yeast.
5. Choose the fermentation. "Cold, in the fridge" plans 2 hours of bulk fermentation at room temperature, 1 to 4 days in the fridge and 3 hours at room temperature before baking. "Room temperature only" spreads 2 to 48 hours between bulk fermentation and the final proof of the balls.
6. Enter your real temperatures. Room temperature and, for cold fermentation, the temperature inside your fridge. These change the yeast amount more than anything else.
7. Read the result. You get a table of ingredients in grams with their baker's percentages, any warnings, and the schedule. The button under the schedule downloads it as an .ics file you can open in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.

The yeast amount comes from our own formula, fitted to a widely used community yeast table. The method page explains the maths, the sources and how accurate it is.

What the planner does not do yet

It does not calculate poolish, biga or sourdough, and it has no presets for pan pizzas such as Detroit, Sicilian or Roman teglia. It works in grams only. If you need one of these, the guides explain what the published recipes do: biga vs poolish and Detroit-style pizza dough.

Frequently asked questions

Is DoughPlan free?

Yes. There is no account, no paid tier and nothing to install. The planner runs in your browser and does not send what you type anywhere.

How much yeast do I need for a 48 hour cold ferment?

With the planner's cold schedule (2 hours at 21 °C, 48 hours in a fridge at 4 °C, then 3 hours at 21 °C), our model gives about 0.089% instant dry yeast on the flour weight. That is about 0.45 g for 500 g of flour. A warmer fridge or kitchen needs less. See how much yeast for pizza dough for a full table.

Why are the yeast amounts so small?

Long fermentations need very little yeast, because the yeast keeps multiplying for the whole time. In our model, doubling the yeast cuts the fermentation time by roughly 40%, it does not halve it. A scale that reads to 0.01 g helps. If yours only reads whole grams, the yeast guide shows how to measure small amounts with water.

Can I use active dry or fresh yeast instead of instant?

Yes. Choose your yeast in the form and the planner converts: active dry is 1.3125 times the instant amount and fresh (cake) yeast is 3.125 times, the same ratios as the yeast table the model is fitted to. AVPN and Ooni publish similar ratios; the method page lists them.

My fridge is not at 4 °C. Does that matter?

Yes, quite a lot. For a 2 day cold ferment, our model gives about 0.107% instant yeast at 2 °C and 0.064% at 7 °C. The FDA advises keeping a fridge at 40 °F (4.4 °C) or below and checking it with an appliance thermometer, because few fridge controls show the real temperature. Put a thermometer in your fridge and enter what it reads. More in how long to cold ferment pizza dough.

What does the 1.5% extra dough mean?

Some dough always stays in the bowl and on your hands. The planner adds 1.5% to the total so that you still get the number of balls you asked for at the weight you asked for.

Can it plan poolish, biga or sourdough?

Not yet. The planner only does straight doughs with commercial yeast. Preferments and sourdough behave differently, and we will only add them when we can source the numbers. Until then, biga vs poolish explains the difference and what published guides use.

Is the schedule exact?

No schedule can be. The model assumes a typical dough and measures time until the dough is ready to bake. Dough temperature, very high salt or sugar, and old yeast all change the timing. Use the schedule to plan your days, then check the dough itself. Pizza dough problems covers what to look for.