DoughPlan

Baker's Percentage for Pizza Dough Explained

By Josep Mampel Marques, updated

Baker's percentage writes every ingredient as a percentage of the flour weight, with flour always at 100%. A pizza dough of 100% flour, 65% water, 2.8% salt and 0.09% yeast means 65 g of water, 2.8 g of salt and 0.09 g of yeast for every 100 g of flour. Wikipedia defines it as "a ratio in percentages of each ingredient's weight to the total flour weight". Because everything is relative to the flour, you can scale a dough to any size and compare recipes at a glance. The DoughPlan planner does the arithmetic for you; this guide shows what it is doing.

How to calculate it from grams

Divide the weight of each ingredient by the weight of the flour and multiply by 100. Take Ooni's classic pizza dough, which lists 613 g of "00" flour, 368 g of water, 18 g of salt and 2.7 g of instant yeast:

IngredientGramsCalculationBaker's percentage
Flour613 g613 ÷ 613100%
Water368 g368 ÷ 61360.0%
Salt18 g18 ÷ 6132.94%
Instant yeast2.7 g2.7 ÷ 6130.44%

The water percentage has its own name, hydration. Ooni gives the same example in its hydration guide: 1,000 g of flour and 600 g of water is a 60% hydration dough. See Neapolitan pizza dough hydration for the ranges by style.

Three published doughs side by side

Once recipes are in percentages, differences that hide in grams become obvious. Where a source gives grams, the percentages are our arithmetic.

RecipeFlourWaterSaltOilSugar
Ooni classic (12 inch, 250 g balls)613 g, 100%60.0%2.94%nonenone
King Arthur Neapolitan-style232 g, 100%73.3%3.45%none1/2 teaspoon
King Arthur New York-style360 g, 100%57.2%3.33%3.33%3.33%

Both King Arthur recipes use more salt than a typical bread. King Arthur says bread dough generally has "approximately 1.8 to 2% of the weight of flour" in salt. The salt guide, pizza dough salt percentage, goes into why pizza runs higher.

From percentages to grams for your batch

Going the other way takes one extra step, because you usually know how much dough you want, not how much flour. First add up the percentages, including flour. The sum is called the formula percentage. Then divide the dough weight by it as a fraction.

Example: 4 dough balls of 250 g, with the planner's home oven Neapolitan preset (65% water, 2.8% salt) and a 2 day cold ferment, which our yeast model puts at 0.089% instant dry yeast.

  1. Dough weight: 4 × 250 g × 1.015 = 1,015 g. The 1.5% extra covers dough left on the bowl and your hands.
  2. Formula percentage: 100 + 65 + 2.8 + 0.089 = 167.9%.
  3. Flour: 1,015 ÷ 1.679 = 604.6 g.
  4. Everything else is flour times its percentage.
IngredientPercentageGrams
Flour100%604.6 g
Water65%393.0 g
Salt2.8%16.9 g
Instant dry yeast0.089%0.54 g

These figures come from the DoughPlan engine. The method page lists the same steps.

Common mistakes with baker's percentages

One more convention to know: if a recipe uses a poolish or biga, the usual practice is to count the flour inside it as part of the 100%. See biga vs poolish for how published recipes split the flour.

Frequently asked questions

Do baker's percentages have to add up to 100%?

No. Flour is 100% by definition, and every other ingredient is added on top. A typical pizza dough totals roughly 165% to 175%. The sum is called the formula percentage, and it is the number you divide the dough weight by to find the flour.

What is a normal hydration for pizza dough?

The published recipes above run from 57% to 73%. The AVPN regulations for Neapolitan pizza work out to 55.6% to 62.5%. The planner's presets start at 60% for the AVPN style, 65% for a home oven and 63% for New York.

Can I convert a recipe in cups to percentages?

Only roughly. Weigh your usual cup of flour and water once, then work from those weights. King Arthur's own recipes give grams alongside cups, for example 232 g for 2 cups of "00" flour, so you can use their weights directly.

Next steps

Sources