How Much Poolish for Pizza Dough? Allocate the Flour First

There is no single required Poolish percentage for pizza. Define the percentage as the share of total flour prefermented, then choose an allocation that fits your recipe and final hydration. This calculator’s default is an editable planning example, not a universal standard.

Use the Poolish calculator to split the master recipe. At 100% Poolish hydration, its water mass equals its flour mass; both are already included in the final recipe totals.

A 20% example

For 1,000 g total flour and 65% final hydration:

Poolish flour = 1,000 × 20% = 200 g
Poolish water = 200 g
Fresh flour at final mix = 800 g
Total water = 650 g
Fresh water at final mix = 650 − 200 = 450 g

The wet Poolish weighs about 400 g before yeast. Calling this “20% Poolish” refers to the 200 g flour allocation, not a 200 g wet preferment. Naming the basis prevents a large formulation error.

A water constraint you cannot ignore

For a final 65% hydration, allocating more than 65% of total flour to a 100%-hydration Poolish would require more water in the Poolish than exists in the complete recipe. A 100% Poolish allocation cannot remain a 100%-hydration Poolish inside a 65%-hydration final recipe.

The shared legacy engine protects water conservation, and the interface reports when an allocation cannot meet the specified preferment hydration. Reduce the allocation or revise the recipe; do not describe a capped preferment as unchanged 100% hydration. A stiff preferment may be a different option, but it changes the method.

Yeast allocation is also a choice

The tool splits part of the total commercial yeast into the preferment. Its inherited allocation is a planning assumption and is capped by the total yeast available. It is not a maturity guarantee. A recipe may specify a different preferment dose and different timing.

Use a complete recipe’s dose if available. Compare maturity at mixing and the resulting dough, rather than selecting a high allocation because “more Poolish” sounds better. See yeast amounts for measurement and schedule limitations.

Keep final hydration constant for comparisons

If you compare 20% and 40% prefermented flour, subtract the appropriate water in each case. Adding the same final water to both increases hydration in the higher-allocation batch, so you are no longer testing preferment allocation alone.

Keep flour, final hydration, portion mass and bake conditions consistent. Record when the preferment was mixed, its temperature, maturity cues and final mixing behavior. Poolish versus Biga compares the different consistencies with identical flour allocation.