Pizza Dough Methods
Pre-ferments and slow fermentation techniques that make home pizza taste like a pizzeria. Each method has its own calculator preset and guide.
🫧 Poolish
Wet pre-ferment (100% hydration), 16-20 hours at room temperature. Gives Neapolitan-style dough extra flavor and an open crumb. Easy for beginners.
Open poolish calculator →🥐 Biga (coming soon)
Stiff pre-ferment (50% hydration), 12-18 hours cold. Sharper, more bread-like flavor than poolish. Traditional Italian method for ciabatta and Roman-style pizza.
Read biga guide →🫙 Sourdough
Wild yeast starter, 48-72h cold ferment. Most flavor, most planning, no commercial yeast needed. Our calculator handles starter hydration automatically.
Open sourdough calculator →❄️ Cold Fermentation
Any dough, 24-72 hours in the fridge after bulk rise. Adds flavor without requiring a pre-ferment. Simplest way to upgrade from same-day dough.
Read cold ferment guide →Which method should you use?
The right method depends on how much time you have and what flavour you want. Here's a quick comparison.
Why use a pre-ferment at all?
A pre-ferment is a small portion of dough mixed and fermented separately before the final dough. The long, slow fermentation breaks down starches into simpler sugars, develops gluten without kneading, and produces lactic and acetic acids that give finished pizza a complex, slightly tangy flavour. It also makes the crust easier to digest because much of the work has been done by yeast and bacteria before you eat it.
If you've ever wondered why pizzeria dough tastes different from quick home dough, the answer is almost always time. A poolish or biga added to a 24-hour cold-fermented dough gets you 80% of the way to that pizzeria flavour with about 5 minutes of extra work the night before.
Common questions
Can I combine methods?
Yes, this is what most professional pizzerias do. The most common combination is poolish (or biga) plus cold fermentation. Mix the pre-ferment in the evening, build the final dough the next morning, then cold-ferment the bulk in the fridge for 24-48 hours before shaping. This gives you the depth of pre-ferment plus the convenience of fitting a long cold ferment around your schedule.
Which method has the most flavour?
Sourdough, by some distance. The wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria in a mature starter produce a wider range of flavour compounds than commercial yeast can. Sourdough is also the most demanding method — you need to keep a starter alive, time the bulk fermentation around its activity, and accept that some batches will be more sour than others. For pure flavour-per-minute-of-work, poolish or biga combined with cold fermentation is hard to beat.
Do I need a calculator for these methods?
Strongly recommended. Pre-ferments add another layer of baker's percentage math: the poolish has its own flour, water, and yeast, which then gets subtracted from the final dough's totals. Doing this by hand on a 4-pizza batch is error-prone. The calculator handles all the bookkeeping — toggle Poolish or Biga under Pre-ferment and it splits the totals automatically.
Is one method better for cold-fermenting?
Cold fermentation works with any method, but biga handles long cold ferments better than poolish because of its lower hydration and stronger gluten structure. Poolish past 48 hours in the fridge can over-acidify and weaken the dough. Biga is more forgiving for 60-72 hour cold ferments. For shorter ferments (24-48h), either works well.