How Much Dough Is Used for a 12-Inch Pizza?

If you’re trying to figure out how much dough is used for a 12 inch pizza, the answer depends on what style of pizza you’re aiming for. For a 12 inch traditional hand stretched crust pizza, I recommend 250 grams of dough, while for a 12 inch thin crust pizza, 175 grams of dough is more than enough. Finally, for a 12 inch thick crust pizza (especially deep dish pan), you’ll want to use at least 350-400 grams of dough.

To make sure your pizza dough comes out perfect every time no matter the weight, I recommend using my pizza dough calculator. This calculator lets you input a total weight, a hydration level, and even gives you the option to use poolish while it does all the annoying math for you automatically.

Pizza Style	Pizza Size (inches)	Dough Weight (grams)	Dough Weight (ounces)
Thin Crust	12	175	6
Traditional Hand-Tossed	12	250	8.8
Thick Crust	12	300	12.5-14
Thick Crust Pan Pizza	12	350	10.6
Detroit Style	8×10	425	15

Thin Crust Pizza

Thin crust pizza is typically crisp with a delicate texture, so you’ll need less dough compared to other styles. A 12-inch thin crust pizza generally requires about 175 grams (6 ounces) of dough. 

For me, what separates thin crust from hand tossed is the use of a rolling pin. The rolling pin changes the texture of the dough quite a bit, removing most of the air bubbles you get with a hand-stretched dough. 

But what you lose in texture, you gain in overall surface area. This means a relatively small amount of dough can make a fairly large pizza. That’s why I recommend starting off with 175 grams (6 oz) of dough and seeing how large it is when you roll it out. In my experience, it should be more than big enough to fill out a 12 inch pizza. If it ends up bigger than 12 inches, try 150 grams (5.3 oz) the next time.

I recommend opting for a thin crust style when you want to minimize the amount of dough required, either for dietary or practical reasons.

Traditional Hand-Tossed Pizza

For a 12 inch traditional hand tossed pizza crust, I always use 250 grams (8.8 oz) of dough. For me, this is the perfect amount of dough for a thin base and a raised, puffy crust

Traditional hand-tossed pizza (or hand-stretched) is my personal favorite style of pizza crust. This style has a crust that’s thicker and chewier than thin crust, while still very thin and airy compared to your average pizza crust from one of the big pizza chains.

Traditional crust pizza encompasses several different styles, most notably New York and Neapolitan style pizza. The benefit of stretching a dough like this by hand is that it retains the air bubbles, gasses, and gluten structure that develops as the dough proofs and ferments. 

By contrast, when you roll dough out with a rolling pin, as you would with thin crust, you lose most of these qualities. This is why hand stretched pizza dough is considered the most “authentic” and “traditional” of all pizza styles.

Thick Crust Pan Pizza

Thick crust pizza, especially when made using a deep dish pan, is the thickest style of pizza and so, naturally, needs the most dough. This one also has the most variability when it comes to the total dough amount because what’s considered “thick crust” varies from one person to the next.

For a standard 12 inch, thick crust, deep dish pizza, I recommend using 350 grams (12.5 oz) of dough. This should give you enough dough for about 1 inch thick crust, which is fairly thick, but not so thick that it overwhelms the toppings and just tastes like bread. If you find that’s not thick enough, I recommend adding another 50 or so grams for about a 400 gram dough (14 oz). 

Of course, if you’re just looking for a crust slightly thicker than a traditional pizza, 300 grams of dough is probably more than enough. This way the thickness is more from the crust filling up with air rather than a doughy, bready crust. 

How Much Dough Is Used For A 12 Inch Pizza: More Air vs More Dough

There are two primary ways a pizza crust gets “thick”: more dough, more air, or a combination of the two.

If you want your crust to be thick and chewy, like a piece of crusty bread, you’ll need to add more dough to your recipe. On the other hand, if you want a thick crust that’s light and puffy crust, similar to Detroit style, you want a combination of more dough and more air.

When dough is left to rise (assuming it contains yeast), the process of fermentation causes the pockets of gluten in the dough to fill with air and gas. This is what causes pizza crust to “rise” in the oven as the air and gas expands under high heat and inflates the dough, almost like a balloon.

This is why pizzerias that make deep dish pizza (like Pizza Hut) will typically stretch their dough to fit the deep dish pan, then let it rise in the pan for several hours before topping it and baking. This builds up a maximum amount of air within the dough that leads to a light, fluffy crust that’s thick but not doughy and hard to digest (although Pizza Hut is hard to digest for different reasons!). 

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the amount of dough required for a 12 inch pizza in whatever style of pizza you prefer comes down to personal taste, as well as a subjective understanding of what “thick” and “thin” means to you. 

From my experience, 250-300 grams (8.8 – 10.5 oz) of dough is perfect for a 12 inch pizza. That said, some pizzerias use as little as 220 (7.7 oz) grams of dough per 12 inch pizza, while others go closer to 280 grams of dough. This assumes a traditional crust pizza that’s generally thinner than what you’d get from a standard slice at a place like Domino’s. 

Hopefully this has help you figure out how much dough you need for a 12 inch pizza. If you’re still unsure, you can always experiment with my amazing, custom designed pizza dough calculator, with the options for custom hydration levels and even poolish.

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