Guide
Pizza Dough Ball Weight Chart: How Much Dough per Pizza
Ball weight is crust thickness. Diameter is only the target. Two 12-inch pies from the same dough, one at 230 g and one at 300 g, are different pizzas. The light one thins out and crisps. The heavy one stays bready in the center.
Weigh the balls. Dividing a batch by eye is how one pie eats the extra dough and the others bake dry.
The 12-inch number
The pizza engine states the round-pie band in one line: 260–280 g for a 12-inch pie.
New York defaults to 270 g. Neapolitan defaults to 260 g. Same diameter, slightly different rim. Neapolitan spends more of that weight on the cornicione. New York spends it on a foldable center. Hydration is doing the rest of the work: New York at 68%, Neapolitan at 70%, no oil in the Neapolitan dough.
Drop under the band and the center tears on the stretch. Go over it and the rim never cooks before the bottom chars.
Weight by diameter
Area scales with the square of the diameter. A 16-inch pie is not a 12-inch pie plus a little. It is nearly double the area. Ball weight has to follow, or the crust thins out as the pie gets wider.
Read the 12-inch row off the engine. The other rows are the same thickness, scaled by area.
| Diameter | Ball weight | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 10 in | 180–195 g | Thin round, home steel |
| 12 in | 260–280 g | Engine band for a round pie |
| 14 in | 350–380 g | Scaled from the 12-inch band |
| 16 in | 460–500 g | Scaled from the 12-inch band |
Thickness is a choice. Want a puffier rim at the same diameter? Move up inside the band, or just past it. Want cracker-thin? Move down, and do not expect the rim to stand.
Pans are not balls
Detroit and sheet-pan doughs are sized by the pan, not by a ball chart.
Detroit / Pan on the engine: a 10×14 inch pan, 140 square inches, 516 g of dough. Hydration is 72%. Oil in the dough is 2.5%. The pan is oiled on top of that.
Sheet pan / bar pie: an 18×13 inch pan, 234 square inches, 597 g of dough. Hydration is 60%. That is the low-water workhorse. It presses. It does not get a ball weight.
Change the pan and change the dough weight with the area. A half-size Detroit pan is not “one ball.” It is half the square inches.
Scaling a batch without breaking the ratios
Pick the ball weight first. Multiply by the number of pies. That is the dough weight. Everything else is a percentage of flour, not a spoon.
Hydration stays. Salt stays. Oil stays. Yeast stays at the percentage the schedule asks for. An 8-hour room-temp dough is 0.30% instant yeast. A 24-hour cold ferment is 0.10%. Doubling the batch doubles the grams. It does not double the percentage.
The failure mode is scaling the flour and then eyeballing the water. A 68% dough that picks up an extra splash is no longer the dough you fermented last week. Weigh the water.
Cold ferment happens after the balls are weighed and tightened. Seam down. Covered. A batch left as one mass and cut at bake time has already fermented as one mass. The cuts are uneven. The proof is uneven. Ball first.
Why the scale beats the bench knife
A 1,080 g batch divided in four by eye can land at 250, 265, 275, and 290 g. All four get called “a 12-inch.” Three of them are a different pizza.
The heavy ball resists the stretch and bakes thick. The light ball stretches too far and has no rim. You will blame the oven. It was the portion.
Weigh each ball into a window of about 5 g. Tighten the ball. Do not flour it into a new weight. Bench flour stuck to the outside is not dough, and it burns.
Same dough, same weight, same diameter. Then change one thing if you want a different pie.
Key numbers
- 12-inch round: 260–280 g. Engine band.
- New York default ball: 270 g. Hydration 68%.
- Neapolitan default ball: 260 g. Hydration 70%.
- Detroit 10×14 pan: 516 g. Hydration 72%.
- Sheet 18×13 pan: 597 g. Hydration 60%.
- Instant yeast: 0.30% for 8 hours at room temp.
- Instant yeast: 0.10% for a 24-hour cold ferment.
- Portion tolerance: about 5 g ball to ball.