Why dough weight is an area problem
Dough spreads across a surface, so the amount you need scales with the surface, not with the width of it. The thickness factor is simply the dough weight divided by the area, in ounces per square inch, and once you have one that produces a pizza you like, every other pan size follows from geometry.
| Round size | Area | Against a 14 inch | Ball at 0.0885 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 in | 78.5 sq in | −49.0% | 197 g |
| 12 in | 113.1 sq in | −26.5% | 284 g |
| 14 in | 153.9 sq in | — | 386 g |
| 16 in | 201.1 sq in | +30.6% | 504 g |
| 18 in | 254.5 sq in | +65.3% | 638 g |
The 14 to 16 step is the one worth staring at. Two inches of diameter is 14% wider and 31% more pizza. A shop that scales 14 inch balls at 385 g and 16 inch balls at 440 g has made the large noticeably thinner than the medium without anyone deciding to, and the customer who says the large is not as good is right.
Getting your own factor
Do not take a factor from a chart, including this one. Take a pizza you already like, weigh the dough ball before it is stretched, and divide by the area of the finished pizza in square inches. A 250 g ball on a 12 inch round is 8.82 oz over 113.1 sq in, which is 0.078. A 700 g slab of focaccia in a half sheet pan is 24.7 oz over 234 sq in, which is 0.105 and a completely different eating experience. Both are correct for what they are.
Then hold that number and change the pan. That is the whole point of expressing it per square inch: it travels between sizes, between round and rectangular, and between a home oven and a deck oven, in a way that a ball weight never does.
Rim allowance and where the flat calculation stops working
A pizza with a properly raised cornicione is not a flat disc. Dough gets pushed out of the middle and into the edge, so the middle finishes thinner than the factor predicts unless you add for it. The rim percentage field is there for that. How much depends entirely on style, and the honest way to set it is the same as for the factor: weigh a ball that gave you the rim you wanted and see what percentage over the flat calculation it was.
Pan pizzas that go flat to the edge need no allowance at all. Neither does a thin round pressed with a dough press, which is the closest thing to the flat model there is.
From dough weight to a shopping list
Once you have the total dough, the flour follows from the formula sum. At 100% flour, 62% water, 2.5% salt and 2% oil the percentages sum to 166.5%, so 1,600 g of dough needs 1,600 ÷ 1.665, about 961 g of flour, and everything else falls out of that. This page does that division for you and pushes the rounding remainder into the flour so the rows add to the total exactly.
For a batch large enough that the mixer becomes the constraint, the dough batch and mixer capacity calculator takes the same totals and works out how many mixes it is. The bakers percentage calculator handles the formula in either direction, and the oven temperature converter deals with recipes written in Celsius or gas marks.
Questions people ask
How much dough for a 12 inch pizza?
It depends on how thick you want it, which is the only honest answer, but the arithmetic is fixed. A 12 inch round is 113.1 square inches. At a thin-crust factor of 0.078 oz per square inch that is 8.8 oz or 250 g. At 0.09 it is 10.2 oz or 289 g. At a pan-pizza 0.12 it is 13.6 oz or 385 g. Pick a pizza you have eaten and liked, weigh its dough ball, and divide by the area to get the factor that matches your own preference.
What is a thickness factor?
Dough weight divided by the surface area of the finished pizza, normally in ounces per square inch. It exists so that a preference about crust thickness can travel between pan sizes. Ball weights cannot do this: 300 g is generous on a 10 inch and mean on a 16 inch. A factor is the same number on both, and the correct ball weight for each falls out of multiplying it by the area.
Why does my large pizza come out thinner than the medium?
Almost always because the dough balls were scaled by diameter rather than by area. Going from 14 to 16 inches is only 14% more diameter but 31% more area, so a 14% bigger ball spreads an eighth thinner. Multiply by the area ratio instead and the crusts match. The same error runs the other way on small sizes, where an under-reduced ball makes a 10 inch pizza that is all crust.
Does the same factor work for rectangular pans?
Yes, that is the advantage of using area. A half sheet pan with about 18 by 13 inches of usable surface is 234 square inches, so at 0.0885 it takes 20.7 oz, about 587 g. In practice rectangular pan pizzas are usually made much thicker than round ones, so the factor you use for a sicilian or a focaccia will be higher than the one you use for a thin round, and that is a style choice rather than a geometry one.
How much extra dough should I add for handling loss?
For a home batch of four pizzas, two percent covers what stays on the bowl and the bench. For a production day it depends on the mixer and the scaling method, and the way to find your own figure is to weigh the total dough out of the mixer and compare it to what you put in. Losing more than five percent usually points at a specific place it is going, such as a bowl that does not scrape clean or a bench that is being floured heavily.