"I don't understand the hydration thing. Could you explain what it means please." That question showed up in a Facebook pizza group under a post about a 62% hydration dough, and we'd bet plenty of people reading it were thinking the same thing.
Pizza dough hydration gets thrown around like everyone already knows it. Plenty of people don't. Your pizza and your houseplants share the word, and that's about where the overlap ends.
Here's what it means, what the numbers look like, and why the wettest dough on the internet probably isn't the one you want.
What Pizza Dough Hydration Means
Hydration is how much water is in the dough compared to the flour, by weight. Ooni puts it simply: 1,000 grams of flour and 600 grams of water makes a dough with 60% hydration.
That number comes from baker's percentage (a way of writing a recipe where the flour always counts as 100% and everything else is measured against it). Gozney's example is 500 grams of flour with 250 grams of water, which is 50% hydration.
Hydration is just water divided by flour. Weigh both and you can work it out for any recipe.
What the Numbers Look Like by Style
Different pizza styles sit in different ranges.
- Neapolitan (the thin, puffy-rimmed style cooked fast in a very hot oven): Ooni says it "generally sits at around the 60 to 65% mark," and Gozney gives 58 to 65%.
- The official Neapolitan rules: the AVPN (the Naples association that certifies true Neapolitan pizza) calls for 1,600 to 1,800 grams of flour per liter of water. That works out to about 56% to 62.5%.
- New York style (the big, foldable slice): Gozney says it "usually has a hydration level of around 65%."
Notice the official Naples range tops out at about 62.5%.
Why Higher Isn't Better at Home
More water makes dough harder to handle. That's not our opinion. Ooni describes 65% dough as "slightly tacky and a little more difficult to work with," and 70% as "sticky and loose, making it trickier to shape and handle for beginners." Gozney adds that it "can be challenging to move high hydration, sticky dough from your working surface to the oven."
Home pizza makers say the same thing, just with more feeling. One person on r/Pizza wrote that they'd been "trying 80% but can't get the dough coherent enough to reliably transfer into the oven." Another tested 50, 60 and 65%: "60 is my favorite in my wood fired oven. > 65% is just too soupy to handle."
A pizza that never makes it off the peel (the flat paddle you slide pizza on) isn't a better pizza. It's a very sad calzone (a pizza folded in half).
The best hydration is the one you can actually stretch and launch (slide off the peel into the oven) without a fight.
How to Find Your Number
- Weigh, don't scoop. Hydration only works by weight. We've found cups of flour vary too much to give you a real number.
- Do the math on your current recipe. Divide the water weight by the flour weight. If you've never checked, you might be surprised where you already are.
- Start in the Neapolitan range. Around 60% to 62% is inside every Neapolitan range above, official rules included.
- Move in small steps. One r/Pizza commenter put it well: "Go smaller steps. 3% is already a big difference... see if your flour can even take that much water."
- Change one thing at a time. If you change the water and the flour in the same batch, you won't know which one made the difference.
- Judge by handling, not by the number. If the dough sticks to everything and tears on the way to the peel, step back down.
A Common Mistake
The big one is chasing the number. It's easy to keep pushing the water up, batch after batch, then blame yourself when the dough turns to glue.
One r/Pizza commenter didn't hold back: "I also think chasing higher and higher hydration is foolishness." Another said it more kindly: "Higher hydration is not always better, it's about finding the sweet spot (for you!)."
Pick the hydration that fits your hands, your flour and your oven, not the one that wins on social media.
Your Flour Matters Too
The same water amount behaves differently with different flour. Gozney notes the best hydration "depends on what properties you're looking for in your dough, how you want to bake it, and what flour you're using." Even the AVPN rules give a range of flour "depending on the degree of absorption" (how much water a flour can soak up).
We compared the common flours in our June 21 post, The Best Flour for Pizza Dough. And if your dough is already too wet to work with, our Oct. 14 post, Why Your Pizza Dough Is Too Sticky to Handle, walks through the fixes.
How Moon Crust Fits In
Our dough is 62% hydration, right inside the Neapolitan ranges from Ooni, Gozney and the AVPN. It's cold-fermented for 48 to 72 hours (rested in the fridge so the flavor develops slowly).
Local delivery and pickup orders come fresh, not frozen. Shipped orders go out frozen and usually arrive partly thawed. Either way, keep it in the fridge and use it within 3 to 4 days, or freeze it for up to 60 days.
You get to skip the hydration math entirely and go straight to stretching.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I calculate pizza dough hydration?
Divide the weight of the water by the weight of the flour. 600 grams of water and 1,000 grams of flour is 60%.
What hydration should I use in a pizza oven?
For Neapolitan style, Ooni puts it around 60% to 65% and Gozney at 58% to 65%. The official Naples rules work out to about 56% to 62.5%. Starting around 60% to 62% keeps you inside all of them.
Why is my high hydration dough so hard to handle?
More water makes dough stickier, Gozney says, and Ooni adds looser. If yours tears or sticks on the way to the oven, drop the water a few percent and try again.
Want to try 62% dough without weighing a thing? Grab 2 balls of our done-for-you pizza dough and see how it stretches.
Sources: Ooni, Pizza Dough Hydration Explained | Gozney, Pizza Dough Hydration Explained | AVPN International Regulations, 2024