Kevin Hansen
If you’re just getting started with making pizza, you might be hearing people talking about making a “70% hydration dough” or a “60% hydration Neapolitan.” What on earth are they talking about?
Although these phrases can sound intimidating, it’s not really that complicated. The hydration of a pizza dough recipe tells you how much water was added compared to the amount of flour. For example, if 1000 grams of flour were used, then a 60% hydration dough would include 1000 grams x 60% = 600 grams of water. If 500 grams of flour were used in a 50% hydration dough, then the recipe would use a total of 500 grams x 50% = 250 grams of water.
Sometimes the water is all added in one step, but sometimes a portion of the water goes into making a preferment as a first step, and then more flour and water are added later. When calculating the hydration percentage, it doesn’t matter whether the water is added all at once or in two steps. Either way, it’s the total amount of water (compared to the amount of flour) that matters.
Most every pizza dough recipe consists of the same handful of ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast, perhaps olive oil, and maybe a touch of sweetener to feed the yeast (such as sugar or honey). What makes one dough recipe different from another tends to hinge on the relative amounts of flour and water—a.k.a. the hydration.
Pizza dough hydration examples
The table below shows recipes for a few types of pizza dough. These recipes use baker’s percentages. The amounts are all relative to each other using weights. For example, in the Chicago deep-dish recipe below, every 100 grams of flour is combined with 60 grams of water, 1 gram of yeast, 2 grams of diastatic malt (to aid browning), and 2 grams of salt. You could multiply this recipe by 3, 5, 10 or more in order to scale up or down the amount of dough you make. It’s the ratios of the ingredients that matter—and the ratio of water to flour is one of the most important. (Caveat: You can and should reduce the relative amount of yeast that you add to your dough if you are scaling up the recipe a whole bunch—as we do in our pizza dough calculators.)
| Chicago Deep-Dish | Dough for Grilling | Sicilian | |
| Flour | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Water | 60 | 65 | 70 |
| Yeast | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Malt | 2 | – | 2 |
| Salt | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Oil | – | – | 1 |
| Hydration | 60% | 65% | 70% |
As you can see, these recipes have hydration percentages ranging from 60% to 70%. Credit for these recipes goes to The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani, one of my favorite pizza-related cookbooks.
What’s the point of varying the amount of water in your pizza dough? For one thing, the hydration helps determine the crispiness of the crust. For another, pizza cooking times can vary a lot by pizza type. If your pizza is going to be cooking for a long time, then you need to have extra water in your dough or else it will dry out too much. Olive oil can also help with moisture for longer bakes.
How dough hydration relates to baking times
The amount of time spent baking a pizza can range from 60 seconds on the low end up to 30 minutes on the high end—all depending on the style and size of pizza. A super quick bake requires scorching hot temperatures (upwards of 1000°F) while a longer, slower cook will use a lower temperature (maybe around 600°F).
According to the rules laid out by the AVPN, a true Neapolitan pizza must be cooked within 90 seconds. Can you guess whether you want a high or low hydration dough for this? If you guessed “low,” then you are correct. Since there is less cooking time, there is less opportunity for the water to evaporate during the bake.
A typical hydration level for Neapolitan style is usually in the 55-65% range. A beginner making Neapolitan style might want to be in the 60-65% range, though, since they probably won’t be able to bake their pizza quite as quickly as the pros!
For a New York style dough, a typical hydration level is 58-65% if you’re using a 600-650°F oven. (Note that the linked recipe includes olive oil, unlike the Neapolitan dough.) But if you are using the broiler setting on your regular kitchen oven, something in the 65-70% range is advisable since the temperature will be lower (~550°F) and therefore require a longer bake.
How to achieve a crispy crust using hydration
What about crust crispiness? If you want a crispier crust, should you put more or less water in your dough? You might guess that using less water in your dough will result in a crispier crust, but surprisingly, this is wrong! In fact, the opposite is true. By increasing the amount of water in the dough, you increase the steam that gets released in the baking process, and this steam crisps up the outside of the dough while leaving the inside soft and chewy.
For experienced pizzaiolos who love to push the limits of crispiness, dough hydration can reach as high as 85%. But these high-hydration doughs can be really difficult to work with due to the stickiness. You can easily end up with horribly malformed pizzas. So high hydration is not recommended for beginners! The sweet spot for hydration tends to be in the 60-70% range for most people. Once you get a bit of experience under your belt, try adding just a couple percentage points more water than you usually do and see how it goes before pushing the envelope further.
Even within a single style of pizza, the optimal hydration depends on a lot of factors that are hard to pin down: the type and brand of flour, what kind of oven you’re using, and your personal cooking technique. So some trial and error is to be expected! It’s all part of the fun.
Why do pizza dough recipes use grams?
I, and most people serious about making pizza, prefer to use weights instead of volumes. Professional bakers who make cookies and cakes use weights, too. The trouble with volume measurements—for example, “4 cups of flour”—is that everyone measures them a little differently. You can easily end up with air pockets without realizing it, leading to not enough flour being used. On the other hand, some folks “heap” the flour above the top edge of the measuring cup, so there’s the potential to add too much flour as well. You can at least prevent the heaping problem by leveling the measuring cup with the blunt edge of a butter knife … but it’s easiest and best to avoid the problem altogether by using weights! A kitchen scale and a pizza steel are the main pieces of equipment that a beginner needs to start making great pizza at home.
Next steps for beginners
I have recipes and a calculator on this website to help you figure out how much of each ingredient to use at different hydration levels—there’s a Neapolitan dough calculator and a New York dough calculator.
It’s not necessary to own a specialized pizza oven in order to get started. If your home kitchen oven has a broiler that can reach 550°F, then try out my New York style dough, and let me know how it goes!
