When you make a pizza is it important to factor in a variety of things – one of these is the size of the dough balls and how much pizza dough you should use per pizza.
The weight of your pizza dough will depend on what size pizza you are making, and you could use a dough calculator online that can help you find the right size ball of dough for your recipe.
In this article, we are going to be looking at the number of ounces of dough you should use and how to work this out for yourself.
How Many Grams Is A Pizza Dough Ball?
Before you start making your pizza, you will need to follow a dough recipe and separate the dough into balls with your dough scraper while you allow it to rise before baking. This process isn’t as important when you make thin-crust pizzas, but for a thick style pizza, you must let the yeast do its work.
If you want to make a batch of dough, you will need to split it into portions that weight between 200 and 400 grams. The weight of each ball will largely depend on the size of the pizza you want to make. This dough must then be left to rise in a bowl or container that has been lined with oil before putting it in the oven.
How Much Dough Do I Need For A 12-Inch Pizza?
12-inch pizzas are probably the most common and many people work out the weight of the dough as well as the dough per square inch using pi (3.14) to calculate the surface area. The calculations can be confusing, but for a 12-inch pizza, you will need to do the following;
3 14 x 36 = 113.04
113.04 is the overall surface area, but this still does not tell us the weight of the dough we will need to make our pizza. Most pizza experts will tell you that you need to experiment to find the ideal weight, but a good starting point would be to use one ounce of dough for every square inch. You should add or take away dough weight until you feel happy with the pizza, but you must turn back to the calculator again.
This time, we must work out the sum of the dough weight and the surface area of the pizza pan to tell us the dough loading; this is essentially how much dough per square inch of the pan. You can do this by taking the dough weight and dividing this by the surface area of the pizza pan. For this example, we will assume that you are using 10 ounces of dough.
10 divided by 113.04 = 0.0884642 so this tells us that we must use 0.0884642 ounces per square inch for a 12″ pizza recipe.
How Much Dough Do I Need For A 14-Inch Pizza?
Using a similar process to the smaller pizza, we can then work out the ounces of dough we need to make a larger pizza.
Pan size in square inches – 153, now multiply this by 0.0884642 and you have 13.5 ounces which is the dough weight needed for a 14-inch pizza.
You can use this method with your calculator to work out any size pizza depending on how many square inches the pizza pan is, whether this is a 10″ pizza, 16″ or any other size you would like to make. You should also remember that the baking time will vary for different dough types and according to the size pizza you wish to make.
How To Convert To Grams
The pizza dough weight may be difficult to understand if you want to work in grams, so this time, we will look at some weight conversions.
- 5 ounces = 141 grams
- 8 ounces = 226 grams
- 10 ounces = 283 grams
- 12 ounces = 340 grams
- 15 ounces = 425 grams
What Is The Hydration Percentage For Pizza Dough?
The hydration percentage is important, and this refers to the amount of water that we use in the recipe for pizzas. The style pizza that you are going to make will mean that this percentage may vary, but as a rule, the following amount will work well:
- New York-style pizza – 60%
- Chicago style pizza – 55%
- Detroit style pizza – 70%
The amount of water in the dough is important because this will affect the quality. Dough with a high hydration percentage will be more fluffy and airy thanks to the higher levels of water.
Conclusion
It is important to know the correct dough weight for making pizza, and this will differ depending on the style pizza you will make. It is also essential that you know the dough loading for your pizza pan as well as the hydration percentage since all of these things combined will give you a good outcome once the pizza comes out of the high-temperature oven.
You should use a calculator -either an automatic one which can be found online or you can use our quick method for calculating the right amount of dough for your pizza. So whether you are making a thin and crispy New York-style pizza recipe or a thick Chicago pizza recipe – you will easily be able to work out how much dough to use.
