Plan a pizza night
Tell PizzaHQ who is eating and what you are making. It works out how many pizzas, the dough and its ingredients, roughly how much sauce, cheese and topping, how many batches your oven needs and when each stage should start — using the same calculators PizzaHQ publishes separately, with each formula shown.
3 New York-style pizza pizzas
15–21 portions needed, so 2–3 pizzas; planned for the top of the range.
- Portions per person come from PizzaHQ's serving calculator: adults eat 2–3 (light), 3–4 (average) or 4–6 (hearty) portions, children 1.5–2.5, and substantial sides cut everything by a quarter. Appetite varies far more than any formula.
- A portion is about one New York slice (roughly 150 cm² of pizza), so this pizza counts as 8 portions. Change it if your pizzas are unusually rich or light — a deep-dish portion is far more filling than its area suggests.
- The plan uses the top of the range (3 pizzas) so you are more likely to have too much than too little.
Dough: 1500 g (500 g each)
- Flour
- 897 g
- Water
- 556 g
- Salt
- 19.7 g
- Oil
- 26.9 g
- Instant yeast
- 0.72–1.35 g
62% hydration, 2.2% salt, 3% oil, from the "New York-style pizza in a domestic oven" build guide. From New York-style pizza's recorded 450–550 g ball for a 40 cm pizza (500 g typical). A raised rim holds part of that dough, so the centre is thinner than the average suggests. Instant dry yeast for about 48 hours at 4 °C: 0.08–0.15% of the flour, from PizzaHQ's fermentation model — a starting range, not a guarantee.
On top: roughly 660 g sauce, 1188 g cheese, 792 g toppings
About 691–1068 g of everything per pizza.
New York-style pizza is recorded as moderately topped, so PizzaHQ's "moderate" topping-load range applies (0.55–0.85 g/cm² of everything on top). The sauce, cheese and topping split is a default — roughly a quarter sauce, under half cheese, the rest toppings.
How this works
Portions come from PizzaHQ's serving calculator, which works in ranges because appetite does. A portion is about one New York slice, so a pizza's portions are its area divided by that — a small Neapolitan counts as fewer portions than a 40 cm New York pie. The plan is built for the top of the range.
Dough per pizza comes from the style's governed loading — its build guide or its recorded ball weight and size — the same as the pan and pizza-size calculator. Ingredients use the build guide's formula where there is one, otherwise the style's recorded baker's percentages, and yeast comes from PizzaHQ's fermentation model for the schedule you choose.
Sauce, cheese and topping weights come from PizzaHQ's topping-load ranges, chosen by the style's recorded topping density, and split by a stated default. The timed plan is the session planner's, for the number of pizzas planned.
Formulas
- Portions per pizza
pizza area (cm²) ÷ 150- Pizzas
portions needed (top of range) ÷ portions per pizza, rounded up- Dough
pizzas × area × the style's loading (g/cm²)- Everything on top
area × the style's topping-load range (g/cm²), split about 25% sauce, 45% cheese, 30% toppings
Assumptions
- Adults eat 2–3, 3–4 or 4–6 portions for light, average and hearty appetites; children 1.5–2.5; substantial sides reduce everything by a quarter.
- A style with no traditional cheese or sauce gets none in its quantities.
- Ordering mode stops at the pizza count.
Limitations
- Appetite is not a science — the ranges are there so you can choose how generous to be.
- One style per plan. For two styles, plan each share separately.
- Styles without a recorded ball weight, diameter or pan loading cannot have their dough sized safely; the planner says so instead of guessing.
- Dietary needs are not collected. Choose toppings from the catalogue to suit your guests.