DoughPlan

Pizza Dough Salt Percentage: How Much Salt to Use

By Josep Mampel Marques, updated

Pizza dough usually has 2.5% to 3.5% salt on the flour weight. Ooni's classic dough works out to 2.94%, its New York dough uses 3%, King Arthur's New York-style recipe 3.33% and its Neapolitan-style recipe 3.45%. The AVPN regulations for Neapolitan pizza allow 40 to 60 g per litre of water, which is 2.2% to 3.75% of the flour. For 500 g of flour, 2.8% salt is 14 g. The DoughPlan planner uses 2.8% for Neapolitan and 3% for New York, and you can change it.

What published recipes use

Salt as a share of the flour weight. Where a source gives grams, the percentage is our arithmetic.

SourceSaltFlourSalt percentage
Ooni classic pizza dough18 g sea salt613 g2.94%
Ooni New York-style26 g872 g3.0%
King Arthur New York-style12 g table salt360 g3.33%
King Arthur Neapolitan-style8 g table salt232 g3.45%
AVPN regulations40 to 60 g per litre of water1,600 to 1,800 g2.2% to 3.75%
King Arthur, bread in general"approximately 1.8 to 2%"any1.8% to 2%

Pizza sits above the bread norm. We did not find a source that explains why pizza recipes go higher, so we will not guess. What the sources do agree on is the range: nothing published here is below 2.2% for pizza.

Salt in grams for your batch

Multiply the flour weight by the percentage. This is the simplest of the baker's percentage calculations:

Salt percentage500 g flour600 g flour1 kg flour
2%10 g12 g20 g
2.5%12.5 g15 g25 g
2.8%14 g16.8 g28 g
3%15 g18 g30 g
3.5%17.5 g21 g35 g

For 4 balls of 250 g at 65% water, the planner gives 604.6 g of flour and 16.9 g of salt at 2.8%. These figures come from the DoughPlan engine.

What salt does in the dough

King Arthur lists three jobs. Salt slows yeast ("a yeast inhibitor"), it tightens the gluten strands so they hold gas better, and it gives flavour. Without it, King Arthur says, the yeast ferments too quickly, the dough is sticky and weak and the loaf has poor volume. At around 2%, it adds, salt is far too low to kill yeast.

For a planner, the slowing effect matters. The yeast model DoughPlan uses is fitted to a community table written for roughly 2% salt, plus or minus 1. Forum members point out that high salt changes the timing noticeably, and Neapolitan doughs sit at the high end. So at 3% or more salt, treat the yeast amount as a starting point and watch the dough. The method page lists this limit.

Measuring salt by weight

Salt grains differ in size, so a spoonful does not weigh the same for every salt. In the recipes above, King Arthur's 1 1/4 teaspoons of table salt is 8 g (6.4 g per teaspoon), and Ooni's 3 teaspoons of sea salt is 18 g (6 g per teaspoon). Those happen to be close, but a coarse flaky salt would differ more. Use grams.

At 2.8% of a small batch the salt is a small amount, and a 1 g error is about 7% of it in a 500 g flour dough. A scale that reads to 0.1 g is the cheapest fix.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use less salt in pizza dough?

Yes, but you change the dough. King Arthur says that without salt the yeast ferments too quickly and the dough is sticky and bland, and it adds that salt can generally be cut by half with no very noticeable change in texture or browning in bread. Pizza recipes use more than bread, so cut gently. If you cut salt, shorten the fermentation or reduce the yeast, and watch the dough rather than the clock. The yeast guide shows how time and yeast trade off.

How much salt for Neapolitan pizza?

The AVPN range is 40 to 60 g of salt per litre of water, with 1,600 to 1,800 g of flour. At the 60% hydration of the planner's AVPN preset, 2.8% is inside that range. More in Neapolitan pizza dough hydration.

Does salt kill the yeast?

King Arthur says that salt at about 2% of the flour is low enough that it would never kill the yeast in the dough. It slows the yeast down, which is why salt percentage matters for fermentation timing.

Next steps

Sources