Pizza Dough by Weight: Hydration, Fermentation & Style Guide for Home Ovens
Pizza Dough by Weight: Hydration, Fermentation & Style Guide for Home Ovens Pizza dough is a four-ingredient formula where small percentage changes produce dramatically different results. A 12-inch Neapolitan pizza needs 250g of dough at 62% hydration, while the same size New York slice requires 280g at 63% hydration with added oil and sugar. The difference between a puffy, charred Neapolitan rim and a foldable New York slice isn't talent or a secret recipe — it's baker's percentage math. Cold-fermenting that dough for 24-72 hours in your fridge then develops flavor compounds that same-day dough simply cannot produce, including reduced glycemic response according to a 2025 PMC study on Neapolitan pizza digestibility(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12027146/). At UseCalcPro, we built our pizza dough calculator after watching thousands of home bakers guess at ingredient amounts with cup measurements — and consistently end up with dough that's either too wet to shape or too dry to...
How Baker's Percentage Works: The Math and Science Behind Sourdough Fermentation
How Baker's Percentage Works: The Math and Science Behind Sourdough Fermentation Baker's percentage is a ratio system where every ingredient is expressed relative to total flour weight, which is always 100%. A "70% hydration" dough contains 700 grams of water per 1,000 grams of flour. This single number — hydration — determines whether your crumb is tight and uniform (60-65%) or wild and open (80-85%). But the percentage only sets the stage. What actually builds your bread is fermentation: a biochemical process where wild yeast produces CO2 for rise while lactic acid bacteria produce the acids that define sourdough's flavor, extend its shelf life, and reduce its glycemic index by up to 25 points compared to commercial bread. At UseCalcPro, we've watched thousands of bakers plug numbers into our sourdough tool and then ask the same question: "I got the right amounts, but my bread still came out wrong —...