How to Make Neapolitan Pizza Dough: Exact Weights and Timings

Neapolitan pizza dough is a four ingredient dough: flour, water, salt and yeast, with no oil and no sugar, mixed at 58 to 65 percent hydration and baked in 60 to 90 seconds on a floor between 850F and 950F. Everything else about it, the long ferment, the puffed rim, the leopard spotting, follows from those two facts. There is no fat to tenderise the crumb and no sugar to accelerate browning, so the flour, the water and the heat have to do all of it.

This guide gives you the weights first, because that is what you came for, and the reasoning afterwards. Every worked example below has been checked so that the component weights add back to the stated dough weight. If you want to change a number, the dough hydration calculator will rebuild the whole formula around it.

What are the exact weights for a batch of Neapolitan dough?

Below is a standard Neapolitan formula: 62 percent hydration, 2.5 percent salt, 0.2 percent instant dry yeast. That yeast level is aimed at a dough that spends a few hours at room temperature and then 20 to 24 hours in the fridge. Ball weight is 250 g, which stretches to roughly 11 inches.

Check the middle row yourself, because this is the habit that makes every other formula on this site usable: 607.2 plus 376.4 plus 15.2 plus 1.2 equals 1,000.0 g. If your own numbers do not close like that, you have added water on top of flour instead of taking it out of the total, and your dough will be heavier and wetter than you intended.

How do I work out the weights for any batch size?

Hydration is water weight divided by flour weight, expressed as a percentage. In baker's percentage every ingredient is quoted against flour, and flour is always 100 percent. That means the percentages sum to more than 100, and the sum is what converts a target dough weight into a flour weight.

Total percentage equals 100 plus hydration plus salt plus yeast. For the formula above that is 100 plus 62 plus 2.5 plus 0.2, which is 164.7. Flour is the total dough weight divided by 1.647. For 1,000 g of dough that is 607.2 g of flour. Water is 607.2 times 0.62, or 376.4 g. Salt is 607.2 times 0.025, or 15.2 g. Yeast is 607.2 times 0.002, or 1.2 g. The baker's percentage guide works through the same arithmetic in more detail, and the dough ball weight calculator does it for you when your hands are covered in flour.

What hydration should Neapolitan dough be?

The traditional range is 58 to 65 percent, and the right number inside that range is decided by your oven and your flour, not by ambition. Hotter ovens tolerate wetter dough because the bake is over before the extra water can turn the base soggy. Cooler ovens need drier dough because the base has to survive several minutes of moderate heat.

A useful rule: at 900F, run 62 to 65 percent. At 750F to 850F, run 60 to 62 percent. Below 700F, drop to 58 to 60 percent and expect a longer bake. High hydration is not a skill badge, it is a trade: more open crumb, more oven spring, and a dough that sticks to everything on the way in.

All four rows are 1,000 g of total dough at 2.5 percent salt and 0.2 percent instant yeast, and all four add back to 1,000.0 g. Notice what actually happens across the table: the flour falls by 26 g from the driest row to the wettest, and the water rises by almost 27 g. Nothing is being added. Water is displacing flour inside a fixed weight, which is why a 65 percent ball feels lighter and slacker in the hand than a 58 percent ball of identical weight.

Which flour do I need?

For a genuine Neapolitan bake, use a fine-milled Italian 00 pizza flour such as Antimo Caputo Pizzeria 00 Flour, Blue, 11 lb . The relevant properties are not marketing: 00 refers to the grind, which is fine enough that the flour hydrates quickly, and pizzeria-grade 00 is milled from wheat selected to hold up through a long ferment and then brown correctly in a very short, very hot bake.

That last part is the whole argument. Browning at 900F happens in about a minute, so the flour has to develop colour fast without burning. A standard supermarket bread flour carries more damaged starch and more available sugar, which is an advantage at 550F and a liability at 900F, where the rim goes black before the centre of the base has set. If your oven cannot pass roughly 700F, buy a 12.7 percent protein bread flour instead, run it at about 60 percent hydration, and accept a longer bake. That is New York territory rather than Neapolitan, and it is the better pizza in that oven.

Keep a separate bag of POLSELLI Italian Semola Rimacinata, Fine Ground Semolina, 5 kg for dusting. It is coarser than 00, so it rolls under the dough instead of hydrating into paste, and it is the single biggest fix for a pizza that will not leave the peel.

How do I mix Neapolitan dough by hand?

Weigh everything first. A 0.1 g digital scale is not optional here, because 1.2 g of yeast cannot be measured with a spoon and volume measures of flour vary by up to 20 percent, which is enough to move a dough from 62 percent hydration to 54 percent without you noticing.

1. Dissolve the salt in the water. Salt in solution disperses evenly and never lands directly on the yeast.
2. Add about 10 percent of the flour and whisk to a slurry, then sprinkle the instant yeast over the surface and let it sit for a minute.
3. Add the remaining flour in three additions, mixing with a hand or a bench scraper until there is no dry flour left. The dough will look ragged and unpleasant. That is correct.
4. Cover and rest 20 minutes. This autolyse period does a large share of the gluten development for you while you do nothing, which is the best trade available in baking.
5. Knead for 8 to 10 minutes, or do three sets of stretch and folds 20 minutes apart. Stop when the surface goes from torn to smooth and the dough resists a little when you pull it.

Target a final dough temperature of 75F to 78F. That number matters more than most beginners expect, because it sets the clock for everything that follows. A fast instant-read probe is the only way to know it. If your kitchen is hot, use cooler water. If it is cold, use water at about 85F.

How long does Neapolitan dough need to ferment?

Fermentation is a temperature problem, not a time problem. As a working approximation, yeast activity roughly doubles for every 17F rise in dough temperature, so the same dough that is ready in 2 hours at 75F takes roughly 4 and a half hours at 55F. It is an approximation, not a law, but it is accurate enough to plan a day around.

A dependable schedule for the 0.2 percent formula above: mix, bulk ferment 2 hours at room temperature, divide and ball, then refrigerate the balls 20 to 24 hours, then take them out 90 minutes before you fire the oven. The proof time calculator will shift those numbers for your actual room, and the cold fermentation guide covers the 48 and 72 hour versions, which need less yeast rather than more patience.

How do I ball and store the dough?

Divide with a bench scraper and weigh each piece. Balling is a shaping move, not a kneading move: drag the piece toward you on an unfloured patch of bench so the surface tightens, then pinch the seam closed underneath. A tight, smooth skin is what holds gas during the final proof and gives you a rim that puffs instead of spreading.

Store the balls with space between them and a lid, never cling film pulled tight over a bowl. They will spread into discs as they relax, and touching balls tear each other when you lift them. A graduated straight-sided container works for bulk fermentation because you can read the rise as a percentage rather than guess at it, and latching dough proofing boxes stack four to six balls per box on a fridge shelf.

How do I stretch and bake it?

Take the balls out 60 to 90 minutes before baking. Cold dough will not extend. Flour the ball generously, press the centre out to leave a 1.5 to 2 cm rim untouched, then work outward from the middle with your fingertips and finish by draping the disc over your knuckles. Never use a rolling pin: it crushes the gas out of the rim, and the rim is the entire point. Finish by draping the disc over your knuckles and letting gravity take the last two inches of diameter.

Top it fast and sparingly. Crushed raw D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes with a pinch of salt and nothing else is the traditional sauce, and it is not cooked before it goes on. Build on a dusted wooden peel , shake the peel every 20 seconds while you work to confirm the pizza still moves, and launch the moment it is topped. The launching guide is worth reading before your first attempt rather than after it.

Bake on a floor between 850F and 950F for 60 to 90 seconds, turning the pizza three or four times with a small round turning peel . At that temperature one edge cooks in about 20 seconds, so a pizza left facing the flame for 45 seconds is not underdone on one side, it is burnt on the other.

Before you launch anything: the floor of a working Neapolitan oven sits at 700F to 950F and the shell is hot enough to burn on contact. Use long-handled peels only, wear EN407 rated gloves such as Grill Armor EN407 Certified Oven Gloves, 932F Rated rather than a fabric oven mitt, and burn wood or gas outdoors only, with clearance from fences, eaves, awnings and anything else combustible. Never pour water on a hot baking stone: the thermal shock cracks it and the steam that flashes back off it will scald you.

What goes wrong most often?

The dough will not open. It is too cold, or it was balled too tightly, or it is underproofed. Give it another 45 minutes at room temperature before you conclude anything else.

The rim is pale and the base is burnt. Your floor is much hotter than your dome. Let the oven equalise for another 10 minutes, or lift the pizza on the peel for a few seconds mid-bake to finish the top.

The rim is burnt and the base is pale. The opposite problem, common in gas ovens that have been running with the flame high but the stone not yet saturated. Preheat longer at a lower setting rather than shorter at a higher one.

The base is soggy in the centre. Too much sauce, wet mozzarella that was not drained, or a floor below about 700F. Fix the sauce first, because it is free.

The dough tastes of nothing. It fermented too fast. Cut the yeast rather than adding anything: 0.2 percent and 24 hours produces a flavour that 0.5 percent and 4 hours never reaches. Cut the yeast, extend the cold rest, and change nothing else.

What kit actually matters for this dough?

In order of how much difference it makes per dollar: a 0.1 g scale , a bench scraper , a bag of semola rimacinata for the peel, and somewhere for the balls to live in the fridge. Everything else is refinement.

If you are still choosing an oven, judge it on one question rather than on the number printed on the box: how hot does the floor actually get, and does it stay there for the fourth pizza as well as the first. Peak temperature is easy to advertise and thermal recovery is what you notice on a Saturday evening with six people waiting. Everything else about Neapolitan dough, the hydration you can run, the flour that makes sense, the bake time you should expect, follows from the answer to that one question.