Pizza Kneading Temperature Calculator

Always knead your pizza dough at the right temperature

Last update: 18.03.2022

If you read my blog you know that I am paying a lot of attention to temperatures. When you knead pizza dough, making sure that you created the right dough structure at the right temperature is key. Idea range to finish your dough kneading is between 23 and 25 °C . Thanks to this pizza kneading temperature calculator you can get a great help.

Let me share immediately this exclusive pizza making tool and then will share how to use it and why.

Pizza Temperature Calculator

A simple way to use right water temperature when making pizza dough

If you have doubts using the calculator it makes sense to read the following.

Why a water temperature calculator?

The answer is straight forward: the pizza dough life is very much affected by the temperatures. So whenever you knead an Italian style pizza you want to make sure that the final pizza dough temperature is between 23 and 25 Celsius degrees. In some circumstances you can exceed this number. For example, in case of high hydration pizza is common to “close the kneading” also at 27/28 Celsius degrees. This is even more common when using stand mixers.

The best way to get this temperature is to “manipulate” the easier ingredient: water.

Water is easy to adjust in temperature. If you keep it in the fridge you can warm it on your cooker. Otherwise you can take it from the tap (cold or warm).

Although changing water temperature is the easiest way, you still need to consider other influencing factors. In fact in some cases you maybe store the flour in fridge, especially during summer period, for example. In normal case, on the other end, the flour temperature should be a little bit lower (generally 1 Celsius degree) than the one of your room. If you do not have a kitchen thermometer then you can simply rely on my calculator that will give you the value based indeed on your room temperature.

Get a kitchen thermometer

This is a kitchen tool that is essential in your kitchen. Once you have one you will never go back. I am sure you will start using it for a lot of recipes, not only for sourdough feeding or for the pizza dough. I have to admit that I have several thermometers, with different usages.

To help you finding the right one I have some recommendations for you:

get a digital one;
you may prefer one with a wired probe so that you can measure temperature within the ingredients also while cooking;
if you have a laser one, it is still fine, although there can be difference between the surface and the inside of the ingredient.

How to use the pizza kneading temperature calculator

The calculator is very easy to use. Its goal is to help you finishing the kneading with your dough between 23 and 25 Celsius degrees.

To achieve that it requires you to enter a few variables:

room temperature;
flour temperature (by default set at a value calculated on the room temperature);
expected temperature (23 for less hydrated, 25 for more hydrated pizza dough);
Equipment to mix.

Regarding this last selection (equipment) I want to specify that I used some average values. For example I considered that for hand mixing the transferred temperature to the sourdough is about 2 Celsius degrees. This is coming from some well known and accepted values within professional bakers.

I recommend to use this tool every time you are doing a pizza dough. Remember that it makes a huge difference for the proper development of the dough to say within certain temperatures.

Pizza Kneading Temperature Calculator