Pizza Dough Ball Weight Chart

The answer, first

Where those numbers come from

They are pure geometry, and you can check every one of them on a calculator.

Dough weight is proportional to the area of the finished pizza. Area is pi times the radius squared. Multiply by a thickness factor - ounces of dough per square inch of pizza - and you have a weight. Multiply by 28.35 to get grams.

Worked example, 14 inches at standard thickness. Radius 7 inches. Area = pi x 7 x 7 = 153.94 square inches. Weight in ounces = 153.94 x 0.0885 = 13.62 oz. In grams = 13.62 x 28.35 = 386 g.

The mistake almost everyone makes

Scaling dough by diameter instead of by area. Going from a 12-inch pizza to a 16-inch is a 33 percent increase in diameter and a 78 percent increase in dough, because area goes as the square of the radius.

Scale by diameter and your 16-inch pizza gets 378 g where it needed 504, which is why big pizzas made from a scaled-up small recipe come out thin in the middle and tear when you stretch them.

Choosing your thickness factor

0.060 to 0.070 - very thin, cracker-adjacent, or a Neapolitan-style base where a large share of the dough ends up in the cornicione and the middle is nearly translucent.

0.075 to 0.085 - thin New York style. Foldable, crisp at the edge of the slice.

0.085 to 0.095 - standard. If you have never thought about this, you are probably here.

0.10 to 0.12 - thicker, more bread-like, and the range for a pan pizza where the dough is pressed to the edges of a tin rather than stretched.

The useful move is to pick one, use it for every diameter, and only change it when you know what you want to change. It is the only way to make the same pizza twice.

Two adjustments worth making

Add 2 to 3 percent for handling loss. Some dough stays in the bowl and on the counter. If you want four 280 g balls, mix for 4 x 280 x 1.03 = 1154 g of finished dough.

Hydration changes weight but not thickness. A 70 percent hydration dough and a 60 percent one at the same ball weight give different finished thicknesses, because more of the wetter one is water that leaves as steam. If you move up in hydration and your bases feel thinner, add 3 to 5 percent to the ball weight.

Why a scale is what makes this useful

A table of target weights only helps if you can hit them. Divide by eye and a four-way split of 1150 g routinely comes out 250, 280, 300, 320 - a 28 percent spread across the batch, which is more variation than any of the choices above.

Weigh the whole finished dough, divide by the number of balls, and cut to that number with a bench scraper. It takes 30 seconds and it is the difference between four pizzas and four different pizzas. The scale roundup covers what to weigh with.