Biga pizza dough recipe

A contemporary Neapolitan pizza dough where all the flour goes into the biga. Soft, airy, with big puffy crusts. It's the recipe the calculator is built on, baked and tested at home.

• Makes: 8 dough balls of 270 g
• Hydration: 70% total, with the biga at 50%
• Time: about 2 days, mostly waiting (24 h biga, then 18–24 h dough balls)
• Hands-on: about 1 hour

Open this recipe in the calculator → to scale it, change the timings or switch to dry yeast.

Ingredients

Baker's percentages are relative to the total flour.

Biga

Final dough additions

No flour is added in the final dough: it all goes into the biga. Use a strong flour made for long fermentations; this recipe uses Caputo Nuvola.

Timeline

An example schedule for baking on a Sunday evening:

• Friday, 19:00: mix the biga (10 minutes). Ferment at 18°C.
• Saturday, 19:00: mix the final dough, rest, fold and ball it (about 1 hour).
• Sunday, 14:00–20:00: the balls are ready. Bake.

Method

1. Biga: mix 1246 g flour, 623 g water and 3.74 g fresh yeast by hand, just until all the flour is taken up into rough, shaggy strands. Don't knead.
2. Cover loosely (one corner of the lid open, or a light cover with a few holes) and ferment for 24 h at 18°C (64°F).
3. Final dough: break the biga into walnut-sized pieces in a spiral mixer. Mix on low speed, gradually adding 249 g ice-cold water, then 1.25 g fresh yeast.
4. Add 24.9 g salt once the dough is smoother, then 12.5 g olive oil near the end, a little at a time.
5. Stop when the dough is smooth and reaches 23–24°C (73–75°F). Don't let it go above 26°C (79°F).
6. Rest 10–20 minutes, do a set of coil folds, and repeat twice more.
7. Divide into 8 balls of 270 g, ball them and put them in oiled, airtight containers.
8. Close the containers and ferment the balls for 18–24 h at 18°C (64°F). If they look ready at 12 hours, move them to the fridge, then take them out 1–2 hours before baking.
9. Stretch, top and bake as hot as your oven allows. The reference oven is a Breville (Sage) Pizzaiolo with the stone at 410–420°C (770–790°F).

Tips

• No 18°C spot? A wine fridge is ideal. Otherwise enter your real temperatures in the calculator and it adjusts the yeast, or see biga in the fridge or at 18°C.
• Keep the dough cool. Weigh ice as part of the water, and use a probe thermometer rather than an infrared one. More in mixing the final dough.
• Dry yeast: use about 0.4× the fresh yeast weight for active dry, 0.33× for instant. See fresh, active dry or instant yeast.
• Want it wetter? See going to 75% hydration.

Where it comes from

The recipe follows the 100% biga style of Vincenzo Capuano, as taught by Gabriel Reboul, adapted and tested with an Ooni Halo Pro spiral mixer and a Pizzaiolo oven. Neither is affiliated with this site.