DoughPlan

Best Pizza Dough for an Ooni: What Ooni's Own Recipes Use

By Josep Mampel Marques, updated

For a classic Neapolitan-style pizza in an Ooni, Ooni's own recipe uses 00 flour at 60% hydration, about 2.9% salt and no oil, divided into 250 g balls for 12 inch pizzas or 330 g balls for 16 inch ones. Its hydration guide puts Neapolitan dough at 60% to 65%. That matches DoughPlan's "Neapolitan (AVPN style, very hot oven)" preset almost exactly, so you can plan an Ooni dough in the planner without changing anything but the number of pizzas.

What Ooni's recipes use

Percentages are our arithmetic from the grams in each recipe.

Classic pizza doughNew York-style dough
Flour613 g "00"872 g bread flour
Water368 g (60%)567 g (65%)
Salt18 g (2.9%)26 g (3.0%)
Oil and sugarnone44 g olive oil (5.0%), 9 g sugar (1.0%)
Yeast2.7 g instant, 3.5 g active dry or 8.5 g fresh1.25 g instant or 2 g active dry
Fermentation2 hours, then 30 to 60 minutes after shaping, at room temperatureabout 4 hours at room temperature, then 16 to 52 hours in the fridge, out 3 hours before baking
Balls4 × 250 g (12 inch) or 3 × 330 g (16 inch)4 × 380 g (16 inch)
Bake1 to 2 minutes, turning every 20 secondsstone at about 750 °F (400 °C), 4 to 5 minutes

Same day or cold ferment?

The two recipes show the two ways to plan a pizza night.

Same day: Ooni's classic dough

The classic dough uses 0.44% instant yeast for a fermentation of about 2.5 to 3 hours. Our model agrees closely: with 0.44% instant yeast at 21 °C it predicts about 2.8 hours, and at 24 °C about 1.9 hours. That is a good sign for both, but note that 0.44% is above the highest yeast amount in the table our model is fitted to, so the planner will show a warning if you plan something this short. Short fermentations are also where the model is least precise. Watch the dough.

Cold ferment: Ooni's New York dough

The New York dough uses much less yeast (0.14% instant) and a night or two in the fridge. For the same pattern, our model gives 0.098% with 16 hours in the fridge and 0.064% with 52 hours, a little less than Ooni. See how long to cold ferment pizza dough for why the fridge temperature matters so much.

Plan an Ooni dough in DoughPlan

  1. Open the planner and pick when you want to eat.
  2. Choose "Neapolitan (AVPN style, very hot oven)". It fills in 60% water, 2.8% salt and 250 g balls, the same hydration and ball weight as Ooni's classic dough for 12 inch pizzas. For 16 inch pizzas, change the ball weight to 330 g.
  3. Choose your fermentation. "Room temperature only" with a few hours is closest to Ooni's classic recipe. "Cold, in the fridge" with 1 to 2 days is closest to its New York dough.
  4. Enter your room and fridge temperatures and your yeast type.
  5. Download the schedule to your calendar.

The planner switches the oven on 60 minutes before you eat. Ooni's recipes preheat for less: at least 30 minutes for the New York dough, and 15 to 20 minutes in the Detroit-style recipe. Follow your oven's manual; an earlier start just means the oven waits for you.

Neapolitan or New York in an Ooni?

Both work in the same oven. Pick by the pizza you want to eat.

Scaling for more people

The planner rebalances every ingredient when you change the number of pizzas, and adds 1.5% so you still get full-weight balls after some dough sticks to the bowl. As a guide from Ooni's classic recipe, 613 g of flour makes four 12 inch pizzas or three 16 inch ones. For other sizes, see dough ball weight by pizza size.

One caution for large batches: the AVPN regulations note that a big batch needs proportionally less yeast than a small one (5 litres of water take about 1 g of yeast where 1 litre takes 0.30 g). If you scale up a lot, your dough may run ahead of the schedule.

What about Detroit pizza in an Ooni?

Ooni also publishes a Detroit-style recipe baked in a pan. DoughPlan does not have pan presets yet; the Detroit-style guide explains how to use the planner for it anyway.

Sources