About PizzaHQ

What PizzaHQ is not

• Not a generic recipe blog — every style page explains why, not just how.
• Not an AI-personalisation product — recommendations are deterministic and explainable, built from structured data, not a black box.
• Not an account-required product — no login, no user data beyond privacy-safe, consent-gated analytics.
• Not a source of fabricated certainty — where reputable sources disagree, PizzaHQ preserves the disagreement rather than inventing a resolution.

Confidence levels

Every factual claim on PizzaHQ carries a confidence level. This is deliberately a small set of human-readable states, not a numeric percentage — a percentage would imply a precision most pizza-history and technique claims don’t actually have.

Well established

Documented by primary historical sources, protected-standard bodies, or direct technical measurement.

Strongly supported

Corroborated by multiple independent reputable sources with no serious contradiction.

Generally accepted

Widely held among specialist and professional sources, though not formally codified.

Supported, with regional variation

The underlying practice is real but varies meaningfully by region, baker, or era.

Limited evidence

Only thin, indirect, or a small number of sources support this.

Disputed

Reputable sources materially disagree; the disagreement is preserved, not resolved.

How claims are classified

Separately from confidence, every claim is classified by its nature — how it is known to be true, not just how strongly:

• Historically documented practice
• Formally protected or codified definition
• Widely accepted contemporary practice
• Regional convention
• Professional consensus
• Practical guidance
• Food-science explanation
• Disputed claim
• Modern adaptation
• Editorial inference

Recommendation and compatibility logic

The style finder, ingredient recommendations, and compatibility notes are all computed deterministically from the catalogue’s own structured fields — oven suitability, fermentation approach, moisture content, and so on. Every recommendation includes its reasons and trade-offs. Nothing is an unexplained score.

Dough and fermentation modelling

The dough calculator uses standard baker’s percentage arithmetic, which is exact. The fermentation-time yeast estimate is different: it is a first-version model built from a small set of documented reference points, explicitly bounded, and always returns a range rather than a single number, because flour, exact dough temperature, and yeast product freshness all genuinely change the real answer.

Sources

PizzaHQ prioritises official cultural and standards bodies, recognised books and technical publications, and specialist food-science writing over generic recipe content. See the full source register.