🍕 Pizza Planner

The pizza

Changing the style reloads with that style's own numbers — your pizza count and eating time are kept.

Neapolitan. Soft, puffy cornicione with leopard spots. Baked in 60-90 seconds, so it needs a very hot oven. Classic is 11-13" (28-33cm) at 250-280g.

Tipo 00 · W 260-280 · 12.5-13% protein. A strong-but-forgiving 00. Works for every style here: Neapolitan at high heat, and it has the strength for 48-72h cold ferments in the NY / Sicilian / pan doughs. This is the default for all styles. Comfortable range: 58–70% hydration, and up to about 72 hours in the fridge.

Pizza Party Emozione (gas, outdoor) — the right oven for Neapolitan. Emozione at full heat. Deck around 430-460C, and the whole bake is 60-90 seconds. Neapolitan in this oven: 450C for 80 seconds, turning every 20 seconds.

Yeast is worked out for you at 0.15% of the flour — 0.99g of instant dry yeast. That figure comes from the ferment length and your fridge temperature, not from the number of pizzas.

How you are baking them

The oven changes the deck temperature, the bake time, how often you turn them and how many go in at once — all of which is in the plan below.

The dough

Baker's percentages of the total flour. Grey numbers are what this style calls for.

Starter and fermentation

When do you want to eat?

The whole schedule is worked backwards from this. It moves every step — but it does not change the amounts. The amounts follow the ferment length and the pizza sizes.

Start again from the Neapolitan defaults

Neapolitan

4 × 271.4g dough balls

Soft, puffy cornicione with leopard spots. Baked in 60-90 seconds, so it needs a very hot oven.

Total dough
1085.7g
Hydration
62%
Yeast
0.15%
0.99g worked out for you
Start making it
Sunday 27 September at 15:02
1 day 3h before you eat
Eating at Monday 28 September at 18:30 Oven: Pizza Party Emozione (gas, outdoor) for about 4 min

No oil, no sugar -- the crust gets its character from heat and fermentation alone. Do not oil the dough balls.

What to weigh out

The dough

Total flour Caputo Cuoco / Chefs (Saccorosso) 659.4 g 100%
Water 408.8 g 62%
Salt 16.5 g 2.5%
Yeast 0.99 g 0.15%

Instant dry yeast (Caputo Lievito Secco). Total yeast across the whole lot is 0.99g — 0.15% of the flour. Water for the mix should be about 17°C, which lands the finished dough near 22°C.

The schedule

Start Sunday 27 September at 15:02 → eat Monday 28 September at 18:30 · 1 day 3h in total
Sunday 27 September
  • 15:02 Mix the dough 20 minutes
    • Put 409g of water in the bowl at 17C, then add the flour on top -- water first, then the flour on top of it. This is the Italian order and it hydrates evenly.
    • Add 0.99g of yeast and mix on the lowest speed for 2 minutes until no dry flour is left.
    • Add the 16g of salt and mix for another 2-3 minutes.
    • Finish on low until the dough is smooth and clears the side of the bowl. Do not be tempted to run the mixer fast -- speed tears the gluten instead of building it.
  • 15:22 Cover and rest (bulk) 30 minutes
    • Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature.
    • At the end of this the dough should look a little puffy and have gained some volume -- not doubled, just livelier.
    • If you are at all uncertain about hydration, do 2 or 3 stretch-and-folds during this rest. Lift one side, stretch it up and fold it over the middle, turn the bowl a quarter and repeat.
  • 15:52 Divide and ball up 18 minutes
    • Divide into 4 pieces of about 271g each (9.6 oz). Weigh them -- eyeballing it is how you end up with one giant pizza and three small ones.
    • Shape each into a tight ball: pull the dough towards you across an unfloured bench, pinching the seam underneath.
    • Put them in a covered tray or individual containers with a bit of room to grow, seam side down.
  • 16:10 Cold ferment in the fridge (24 hours) 24 hours
    • Into the fridge they go, covered, for the whole of this period. Put them somewhere they will not get knocked, and not against the back wall where they can freeze.
    • Your fridge is set at 4C. Be aware that a fridge running just 2C warmer ferments about 30-40% faster, so if your fridge usually sits warm, check the dough a few hours early rather than late.
    • They will roughly double and look slightly glossy, with small bubbles under the skin. If they have blown up and smell strongly of alcohol, you have left them a bit long -- use them anyway, they will just be softer and more difficult to handle.
    • Do not open the tray to inspect them repeatedly. Every time you do, you let the cold out.
Monday 28 September
  • 16:10 Take the dough out to come up to temperature 120 minutes
    • Out of the fridge, still covered, at room temperature. Cold dough tears.
    • Give it the full 120 minutes. It should feel relaxed and springy -- if it is still cold and tight at the end, wait longer rather than fighting it.
    • Use this time to get the sauce and toppings ready, and to get the oven on if you have not already.
  • 17:55 Get the pizza party emozione to full heat 30 minutes
    • Emozione at full heat. Deck around 430-460C, and the whole bake is 60-90 seconds.
    • Target: about 450C.
    • Give it the full preheat. An under-heated oven is the single most common reason a home pizza comes out pale and soggy in the middle.
  • 18:10 Stretch and top the pizzas 15 minutes
    • Work on a bench dusted with semolina or flour -- not on a wet surface.
    • Press the middle out with your fingertips, leaving the outer inch untouched. That rim is the cornicione; do not knock the gas out of it.
    • Pick the dough up and let its own weight stretch it to size, turning as you go. Keep your hands near the edge, not in the middle.
    • Top lightly and quickly. Sauce first, then cheese, then anything wet or heavy, then the delicate things.
  • 18:25 Bake, turning every 20 seconds 4 min
    • Emozione at full heat. Deck around 430-460C, and the whole bake is 60-90 seconds.
    • Keep the peel moving -- a small shake back and forth to make sure the pizza is loose before you take it to the oven.
    • The Pizza Party Emozione takes 2 at a time, which is what the timetable below assumes.
    Batch In the oven Out Turn it
    Pizzas 1-2 18:25 18:27 every 20 seconds
    Pizzas 3-4 18:28 18:30 every 20 seconds
  • 18:30 Eat
    • Slice and eat them as they come out. Pizza waits for nobody.
    • Afterwards, come back here and rate it -- what you changed and how it turned out is the only way the next one gets better.

Pizza Party Emozione (gas, outdoor)

right oven for this style

Emozione at full heat. Deck around 430-460C, and the whole bake is 60-90 seconds.

450C for 80 seconds, turning every 20 seconds, 2 at a time.

Reaches 550C and is built for high-heat Neapolitan bakes. On low it holds roughly 400-450C across the deck, so it cannot go gentle. Fits two pizzas up to about 30cm at once.

▸ Where these ratios come from (14 sources)

These are the pizza-specific sources behind every default in this planner — AVPN for the Neapolitan window, Caputo's own kitchen for the Neapolitan and poolish formulas, the Pizza Making Forum for the New York and New Haven numbers, Serious Eats for the pan doughs, and two independent cold-ferment guides for the yeast doses.

  1. Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana - Dough Hydration AVPN spec: for every litre of water, 1.6kg flour (62% hydration) up to 1.8kg (55%). Bake around 430C for 60-90 seconds. Confirms the official Neapolitan window we use.
  2. Caputo Flour - Authentic Neapolitan Pizza Caputo's own kitchen: 1kg 00, 640g water (64%), 30g salt (3%), 3g instant yeast, 270g balls, 24h in the fridge. The house reference for the Neapolitan column.
  3. Caputo Flour - Pizza Dough with a Poolish A worked poolish formula: 600g flour / 600g water / 1g yeast for 12-16h, then 400g flour, 50g water, 25g salt (2.5%), 20g oil, 20g honey. 280g balls for 12".
  4. Pizza Making Forum - New Haven style Consensus that New Haven is a high-hydration dough, around 68%, and that the malted flour (GM Full Strength, as used by Pepe's) is part of it.
  5. Pizza Making Forum - New Haven apizza formula A worked New Haven clone: bread flour, 69% hydration, 2.5% salt, 2% oil, 12h poolish at 0.4% ADY, 48h cold ferment, 90 minutes to come to room temperature, baked about 600F for 8 minutes.
  6. Pizza Making Forum - New Haven, 312g balls 312g dough balls, 69% water, 2% olive oil, 2.5% salt, 40 minutes bulk, 38 hours cold, 3 hours temper, stretched to 14-15".
  7. Pizza Making Forum - The definitive New York dough Shops that care do a cold ferment or a poolish, hydration 'low sixties, 62% at the most'. Confirms the 58-65% window and the thin, pourable sauce.
  8. Pizza Making Forum - dough weight vs diameter 16oz of dough stretched to 14" gives a thickness factor of 0.10; a true NY pie sits between 0.07 and 0.08. This is where the g/in2 figures for the NY column come from.
  9. Serious Eats - The Pizza Lab: Three Doughs to Know Square pan / Sicilian dough: flour 100%, salt 2%, instant yeast 1.5%, olive oil 3%, water 70%. Also documents the no-stretch, oil-the-pan method we use for both pan styles.
  10. Ooni - The Great Debate: Biga vs Poolish A biga is a stiff mix at 60-70% water in Ooni's wording, 6-12h; a poolish is equal flour and water and usually 30-50% of the total flour. Source for how the two starters differ and why a wet biga behaves differently.
  11. Gozney - 100% Biga Pizza Dough A 100% biga worked example: biga of 1kg flour, 450g water (45%), 10g yeast, then 210g more water in the closing dough for 66% total, and 2.5% salt. Basis for the biga defaults here.
  12. DoughVault - Cold Fermentation guide Instant yeast for a 4C fridge: 24h 0.15-0.25%, 48h 0.08-0.15%, 72h 0.05-0.10%. Also warns a fridge running 2C warm ferments 30-40% faster, which is why the planner adjusts for your fridge temperature.
  13. Jordos Pizza Calculator - Cold Fermentation A second, independent yeast table: 24h 0.10-0.15%, 48h 0.05-0.10%, 72h 0.03-0.05% IDY, plus the rule that cold dough needs 60-90 minutes at room temperature before stretching.
  14. LAPA - Caputo Nuvola vs Cuoco explained Cuoco at 12.5-13% protein and W 260-280 absorbs 65-70% water comfortably. Background for treating Cuoco as the do-everything flour.