• When do you want to eat? — Set the Total Time slider first. Everything else flows from that.
• How wet? — The Hydration slider controls your crumb. Start in the green zone if it's your first time.
• How warm is your kitchen? — Set the Room Temp slider. The yeast model adjusts automatically.
• How many balls? — Set your count and size. 250g = 10–11" Neapolitan. 280g = 12–14" NY style.
• Pick your style — Neapolitan or New York. Adjusts salt, oil, and hydration defaults automatically.
• Room temp or fridge? — Room temp is simpler. Cold ferment takes longer but builds more flavour.
• Check your ingredients — The ingredient card updates live. Make sure you've got everything before you start.
• Hit ▶ Begin when you're ready — This stamps your start time and turns the whole thing into a live schedule. Every step gets a real clock time.
• Follow the steps — Tap ⏰ on any timed step to set your phone's timer automatically.
• The notification — A reminder lives in your notification drawer showing which step you're on. Tap it any time to jump straight back.
• Need more detail? — Everything below goes deeper. Tap any section to expand it.

When do you want to eat? Work backwards from there. The Total Time slider is how many hours from mixing to eating. Set it, and the calculator figures out everything else — the yeast quantity, your fermentation times, and the method steps. Longer fermentation develops deeper flavour and better browning. A cold ferment of 24–72 hours produces the best results — the enzymes in the flour stockpile free sugars and amino acids while the dormant yeast is not consuming them, and that biochemical stockpile is what drives the Maillard reaction in the oven. But a same-day 8-hour dough still makes great pizza.

Neapolitan — lower hydration (58–65%), higher salt (2.5–3%), no oil. Baked fast at extreme heat (300°C+). The result is a soft, pliable base with a puffy, charred cornicione. Traditionally uses Tipo 00 flour, though any strong bread flour with 12–14% protein works. This is a simple dough — flour, water, salt, yeast, nothing else.

New York style — moderate hydration (58–65%), standard salt (2–2.5%), with olive oil (1–3%). Baked at lower temperatures (230–260°C) for longer. The oil coats the gluten strands, shortening the network and creating a crispier, more tender crust. Use high-gluten bread flour with 13–15% protein for the best structure and chew. NY dough needs to be strong enough to hold toppings and fold without cracking.

Set the count and size using the steppers. The calculator uses baker's percentages to work backwards from your ball weight to the exact flour, water, salt, and yeast quantities.

Flour strength matters. The W-value measures how much punishment a flour can take — how much water it can absorb and how long it can ferment without collapsing. A weak flour (W150–200) is fine for a same-day bake but will fall apart during a 48-hour cold ferment. For long fermentation, use a strong flour (W260–320) or very strong Manitoba-type (W320+) with 13–15% protein. If you do not know your flour's W-value, check the protein content on the label — higher protein generally means stronger flour.

Hydration is the ratio of water to flour. For pizza, the range is much narrower than for focaccia. 58–65% is the sweet spot for both styles. Lower hydration (55–60%) gives a stiffer dough that is easier to handle and produces a crispier base. Higher hydration (63–70%) gives a softer, more extensible dough with a lighter crumb, but it is harder to shape and more likely to stick.

If you are new to pizza making, start at 60–62%. Work up as your handling improves. Do not confuse pizza hydration with bread hydration — a 65% pizza dough is a completely different animal to a 65% focaccia.

Salt is not optional. It strengthens the gluten network by allowing the protein strands to cross-link more tightly. Without it, the dough is slack, tears easily, and ferments out of control. Traditional Neapolitan uses 2.5–3% — higher than most bread recipes. The salt also creates osmotic stress on the yeast cells, which slows fermentation and gives you more control over timing. The calculator adjusts the yeast automatically when you change the salt percentage.

Neapolitan dough traditionally contains no oil. NY style uses 1–3%. Oil does not hydrate the flour — it coats the gluten strands and physically interrupts their formation, which is why it makes the crust more tender and crispy.

Room temp — all fermentation at ambient temperature. Simpler, faster, and good results. The time slider will not go past 30 hours in room temp mode — beyond that, the dough will overproof and collapse.

Cold ferment — mix, knead, divide into balls, then straight into the fridge. At fridge temperature (4°C), yeast drops to about 15% activity, but the flour's amylase and protease enzymes only slow by about 50%. So while the yeast sleeps, the enzymes keep breaking down starches into sugars and proteins into amino acids. This is the secret to superior browning, blistering, and complex flavour. The time slider will not go below 14 hours in cold mode.

Temperature is the master variable. A 2°C change can alter yeast activity by up to 25%. The calculator compensates automatically — just set the slider to your kitchen temperature. The yeast model uses a Q10 biological coefficient: yeast roughly doubles its metabolic rate for every 10°C increase, up to its thermal death point around 55°C. If your kitchen is warm, you need less yeast. If it is cold, you need more. The maths handles this for you.

Steps that need timing show a ⏰ timer pill. Tap it and your phone's native clock app opens with the correct duration. Important: native timers only work in the Android app. On the website, the pills show as progress indicators but will not launch external timers.

Every ingredient in the calculator is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight. Flour is always 100%. If hydration is 63%, that means 63g of water for every 100g of flour. This system makes scaling effortless — change the ball size or count and every ingredient recalculates instantly. It also means you can compare recipes at a glance regardless of batch size. The yeast percentage looks tiny (often 0.1–0.3%) because it is — a little goes a long way, and the calculator works out exactly how much you need based on your time and temperature.

After kneading, pinch off a small piece of dough — about the size of a large marble. Slowly stretch it between your fingers into a thin sheet. If the gluten is properly developed you can stretch it thin enough to see light through it without it tearing. That is the windowpane. If it tears immediately, knead more. If it stretches but tears before going translucent, give it one more round and test again. By round 4 of the knead-and-rest cycle it should pass cleanly.

Once you hit ▶ Begin, tap Timeline on the method card to see every step mapped to a real clock time. If you want to eat at a specific time, use this to work out when to start mixing. The timeline updates live as your bake progresses.

Tap the bookmark icon in the header to open saved recipes. Save any calculator setup — style, hydration, ball count, ferment type, times — with a name and optional notes. Load it later to restore those exact settings instantly. Recipes are stored on your device and will not transfer between devices.

Tap the share icon in the header to share your current recipe as a plain text summary — style, ball weight, hydration, ferment type, yeast quantity — via any app on your phone.