Counter guide — flour, ovens, sauce and troubleshooting

Flour

The single biggest lever after fermentation. Protein content sets how much gluten you can build, and gluten sets whether a dough can hold gas through a long ferment or a hard stretch.

Italian 00 is a grind, not a strength. It is milled very fine, which is why Neapolitan dough feels silky, but a 00 can be weak or strong. Look for the W value: W 260-300 for Neapolitan, W 300-350 for high hydration and long ferments.
Bread flour, 12.5-14% protein, is the correct default for New York, Detroit, al taglio and anything cold fermented for days. If a recipe here does not say otherwise, use this.
All-purpose, 10-11.5%, is right where you want tenderness over chew: Chicago tavern, St. Louis, deep dish.
Semola rimacinata is durum, twice milled. It adds a yellow colour, a coarse sweet bite and a lot of water absorption. Use 20-30% in Sicilian and sfincione, and use the coarse stuff on the peel as a ball bearing.
Wholemeal ferments faster and absorbs more water. Past 20% it starts cutting the gluten network with bran, so raise the hydration and lower the yeast.
Diastatic malt powder adds enzymes and helps a pale home-oven crust brown. Half a percent is plenty; more makes the crust gummy.

The rest of the formula

Every percentage in the calculator is a share of the flour weight. Here is what each one is buying you.

Water. More water means a lighter, more open crumb and a harder dough to handle. 55-62% is easy, 65-70% wants folds instead of kneading, 75%+ wants a preferment and wet hands.
Salt. 2% is standard, 2.5-3% for Neapolitan. It tightens gluten, slows fermentation and is the whole reason the crust tastes of anything. Salt-free dough tastes like paper.
Oil. 2-3% gives a softer crumb, better browning and a crust that stays pliable when it cools. Neapolitan uses none. Deep dish uses ten times that and behaves like pastry.
Sugar. 1-2% helps a home oven brown in the time it has. Deck ovens at 320C do not need it, which is why traditional Neapolitan has none.
Malt syrup. Sweeter and more complex than sugar. At 4-6% it is the defining flavour of Quad Cities dough.
Yeast. The one number that should change with your schedule rather than staying fixed. Use the planner.

Mixing and kneading

Target a finished dough temperature of 23-25C. Warmer and it will overshoot before you can chill it; colder and it sits there doing nothing. The water temperature calculator on the front page works out what to use once you know your flour and room temperature.

By hand, up to about 65% hydration: knead 8-12 minutes until smooth and slightly tacky. Test with a windowpane.
Above 70%, stop kneading and use folds. Wet one hand, reach under the dough, stretch it up and fold it over. Four sets, 30 minutes apart, does more than ten minutes of fighting it on the bench.
Stand mixer: dough hook on low for 6-8 minutes. Low speed only. A stand mixer on high heats the dough several degrees a minute and can tear the gluten it just built.
Rest before you judge. A dough that looks hopeless at minute three usually looks fine after a 20 minute rest, because hydration is not instant.

Balling and shaping

Dividing and balling is not a formality. A tight ball with a sealed seam holds gas; a loose one spreads into a puddle and opens into an oval with a hole in it.

Divide with a bench scraper and weigh each piece. Eyeballing costs you consistency between pizzas in the same batch.
To ball: fold the edges into the centre, flip it seam down, then drag it toward you on an unfloured patch of bench with cupped hands until the surface goes tight and smooth.
Rest balls seam down, spaced apart, covered. If they touch, they fuse and you tear them apart later.
Open by hand for anything with a rim. Press from the centre outward with flat fingers, leave the outer 1.5-2 cm untouched, then stretch over your knuckles or on the bench. A rolling pin pushes the gas out of the rim, which is exactly what you spent two days making.
Roll with a pin for the styles that want no rim at all: Chicago tavern, St. Louis, Roman tonda, bar pie. Dock those with a fork so they cannot bubble.
Use semolina on the peel, not flour. Flour scorches and tastes bitter; semolina rolls like ball bearings.

Ovens and surfaces

Most home ovens top out around 250-290C, which is half what a Neapolitan oven runs. The fix is not a hotter oven so much as a surface that holds and dumps heat quickly.

A steel plate beats a stone for home ovens: it conducts heat into the base far faster, so you get oven spring and a browned bottom in the time the top takes. 6-10 mm is the useful range.
Preheat for a full hour at maximum. Forty minutes is not enough for a steel to reach the air temperature, and an underheated steel is the usual reason a home pizza is pale underneath.
The broiler trick: after the hour, switch to broil for ten minutes with the steel on the top rack. The steel stays loaded, the top element cycles during the bake, and you can pull a New York-style pie in five or six minutes.
Outdoor gas ovens hit 450C+ and cook a Neapolitan in 90 seconds, but they need turning every 20 seconds and they punish wet toppings.
Screens are for pan and thin styles and for anyone whose launch technique is not there yet. Bake on the screen, then slide the pie directly onto the stone for the last two minutes to finish the base.
Launch confidently. Hesitating is what makes a pizza fold on itself. Give the peel one decisive back-and-forth and let the pizza go.

Cheese

Cheese is a moisture problem as much as a flavour one.

Low moisture whole milk mozzarella, shredded, is the default for anything baked longer than five minutes. It browns, it does not weep, and it survives a home oven.
Fresh mozzarella and fior di latte belong on fast, very hot bakes. Tear it, salt it lightly and drain it on paper for at least an hour, or it will flood the pizza.
Brick cheese is the Detroit ingredient. Whole milk mozzarella with 20-25% mild cheddar is the closest substitute and gets you the same fried orange edge.
Hard cheeses go on differently: pecorino and parmesan burn under a broiler, so use them under the sauce or after the bake.
Buy blocks and grate them. Pre-shredded cheese is dusted with anti-caking starch that stops it melting cleanly.

Toppings

The rule is moisture control, and the order matters more than the list.

Anything that releases water gets pre-cooked: mushrooms, peppers, onions, courgette, spinach. Raw ones steam the pizza from above.
Cured meat with a high fat content renders and helps. Natural casing pepperoni cut thick curls into cups; deli-sliced pepperoni lies flat.
Sauce thinly. Most home pizzas are wrecked by twice as much sauce as they need.
Delicate things go on after the oven: rocket, basil, prosciutto, burrata, a finishing oil.
On a long bake, put the pepperoni under the cheese so it renders without burning. On a 90 second bake, put it on top so it has any chance of cooking at all.

Three sauces

Sauce is where most home pizza is lost, and it is nearly always a question of too much rather than badly made. These three cover everything on the menu.

Raw tomato, the Naples and New York default

Enough for four 12 in pizzas

1 x 400 g tin whole peeled tomatoes, San Marzano if you can get real ones
5 g fine sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil, optional
A pinch of dried oregano, for the New York version only

Tip the tomatoes into a bowl and crush them by hand, or pulse two or three times in a food processor. Do not blend smooth: whipping air in turns it pink and makes it watery.
Strain off some of the thin juice if the tin is wet. You want it to sit on the dough, not run off it.
Stir in the salt, and the oregano if you are making a New York pie. Do not cook it.
Use within two days, or freeze in portions.

It cooks on the pizza. Cooking it twice is what makes a sauce taste flat and jammy.

Cooked pan sauce, for Sicilian, Detroit and Greek

Enough for two half sheet pans

1 x 800 g tin crushed tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp sugar
8 g salt
A pinch of chilli flakes

Warm the oil and garlic over low heat until the garlic is fragrant but not coloured, about two minutes.
Add the oregano and chilli and let them bloom in the oil for 30 seconds.
Add the tomatoes, sugar and salt. Simmer 25-30 minutes until it mounds on a spoon.
Cool completely before it goes near dough. Hot sauce on raw dough begins cooking the surface and makes it soggy.

Thick is the point. A pan pizza bakes for 20 minutes and a thin sauce will boil.

Quad Cities chilli sauce

Enough for three 14 in pizzas

1 x 400 g tin tomato sauce or passata
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp ground cayenne
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
5 g salt

Whisk everything together cold. No cooking.
Leave it an hour before using so the chilli hydrates and spreads through.
Taste it. It should be assertively hot on a spoon, because the cheese and the crust will knock most of that back.

The heat is the identity of the style. Halving the cayenne makes a decent pizza that is not this one.

When it goes wrong

What happened	Why	What to do
Dough snaps back and will not open	Underfermented, too cold, or not rested since balling	Leave it covered another 30-60 minutes at room temperature. Never force it; you will tear the middle.
A hole tears in the centre	Rolling or pressing too hard in the middle, or an overproofed ball	Work from the centre outward with flat fingers and stop pressing once the disc is even. Patch it with a scrap and carry on.
Pale, soft bottom	Surface not hot enough, or not preheated long enough	Preheat a steel for a full hour at maximum, bake lower in the oven, and add 1% sugar to the dough for colour.
Burnt bottom, raw top	Too much bottom heat for the bake length	Move up a rack and finish under the broiler, or bake on a screen for the first half.
Soggy middle	Too much sauce, wet cheese, or raw vegetables	Halve the sauce, drain fresh mozzarella an hour, pre-cook the vegetables.
No rim, flat pizza	Gas pushed out of the edge, or overproofed dough	Leave the outer 2 cm untouched when opening, and check the poke test before you shape.
Pizza sticks to the peel	Too long between dressing and launching, or flour instead of semolina	Dress fast, use semolina, and shake the peel every 20 seconds to confirm it still moves.
Dough is a puddle after balling	Loose balling, hydration beyond what the flour can hold, or overfermented	Ball tighter with a sealed seam, drop the water 3%, or use a stronger flour.
Dense, tight crumb	Underproofed, or too much flour worked in during shaping	Give it more time, and shape on semolina rather than adding flour.
Boozy smell, blistered slack dough	Overfermented, too much yeast, or too warm for too long	Bake it as a focaccia today, and cut the yeast dose next time. The planner assumes your fridge is 4C; check it.

Cup weights

What the calculator uses when you switch it to cups and spoons.

Ingredient	Weight	Notes
Bread or 00 flour, 1 cup	120 g	Spooned and levelled. Scooped straight from the bag it is closer to 145 g, which is the entire argument for a scale.
Semola rimacinata, 1 cup	167 g	Denser than wheat flour.
Water, 1 cup	237 g	The one honest volume measure.
Olive oil, 1 tbsp	13.6 g
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp	5.7 g	Diamond Crystal kosher is 2.8 g per tsp, Morton kosher 4.8 g. Swapping brands by volume is how a dough ends up twice as salty.
Instant dry yeast, 1 tsp	3.1 g	A 7 g sachet is about 2 1/4 tsp.
Active dry yeast, 1 tsp	3.1 g	Use 25% more than instant, and hydrate it in warm water first.
Fresh yeast, 1 tsp crumbled	3 g	Use three times the weight of instant.
Sugar, 1 tsp	4.2 g
Malt syrup, 1 tbsp	21 g	Warm it to pour it.
Diastatic malt powder, 1 tsp	3 g	0.5% of flour weight is the ceiling.