What is dough hydration, and why does it matter?
Hydration is baker's shorthand for how wet a dough is, expressed as a percentage: water weight ÷ flour weight × 100. A dough with 650 g water and 1000 g flour is at 65% hydration. It's the number that shapes the crumb more than any other.
What hydration changes
- 55–60%: firmer dough, easier to handle, tighter crumb — common for lower-hydration Neapolitan formulas and a good place for beginners.
- 60–65%: the versatile middle — typical New York and general-purpose pizza.
- 70%+: slack, sticky, needs technique — but rewards you with the big, irregular holes of ciabatta and Roman-style pizza.
Why wetter is harder
More water means a slacker gluten network that flows rather than holds. It sticks to everything and feels unmanageable at first. The trick isn't more flour on the bench — that just lowers your hydration and defeats the point — it's wet hands, a dough scraper, and gentle folding instead of kneading.
Flour matters too
Stronger, higher-protein flour absorbs more water and can carry higher hydration. That's why the same 70% feels different in bread flour versus all-purpose. Doughborough nudges its recommended hydration based on the protein content you enter.
Dial it in
Every style in the calculator starts at a sensible hydration — Neapolitan around 58%, New York around 62% — and you can push it up or down to see exactly how the water weight changes while everything else rebalances.
Explore hydration