Baker's percentages write every ingredient as a share of the flour's weight, so 600 g of water on 1,000 g of flour is 60% hydration. Neapolitan pizza has two written specifications, and both fix the water at one litre, so the flour decides the hydration. In the 2024 rules of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN), 1,600–1,800 g of flour gives 55.6–62.5% hydration on our arithmetic. Its 40–60 g of salt is 2.22–3.75% of the flour. The EU's 2010 text names 1.8 kg of flour in wording that supports more than one total.
A litre of water is the fixed quantity in both official texts
The AVPN's dose table, in its 2024 English edition, is "based on 1 liter (1000ml) of water". Against it sit 40 to 60 g of salt, 0.1 to 3 g of fresh brewer's yeast and flour at "1,600/1,800 (depending on the degree of absorption)", with the unit, kilograms, given only in the Italian edition. The 2022 edition has the same quantities, and both forbid "any fat or sugar".
Commission Regulation (EU) No 97/2010 registers "Pizza Napoletana" as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) on an application from the AVPN and the Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani. Its method starts with "a litre of water", 50 to 55 g of sea salt and 3 g of brewer's yeast. Recital 9 notes that reserving the name itself was not requested.
Flour weight is the only variable in the AVPN's hydration
On 1,000 g of water, 1,800 g of flour gives 55.6% hydration and 1,600 g gives 62.5%. The flour must be type "00" or "0", Italian grades for how refined a flour is, and type "1" may make up 5 to 20%.
The EU annex adds "10 % of the prescribed total quantity of flour" first, then to "gradually add 1,8 kg of W 220-380 flour until the desired consistency is reached". W is a flour's strength on an alveograph test. If the 1.8 kg is the whole flour, the hydration is 55.6%; if it follows that first tenth, the total is about 2 kg and the hydration about 50%, both our arithmetic. The texts also disagree: the regulation's flour table gives an absorption of 55–62, while the Italian text in the Gazzetta Ufficiale of 9 March 2010 says the flour can absorb "dal 50 al 55% del suo peso in acqua", 50 to 55% of its weight in water.
The comparison is old: in May 2015 a Forno Bravo forum poster set a per-litre table from what they called the "VPN website" against a 65% home recipe.
The same salt dose reads as three different percentages
Fifty grams of salt in the AVPN's litre is 5% of the water, 2.8–3.1% of the flour and about 1.8% of the finished dough. Recipes saying "salt 2%" and "salt 3%" can both fall inside the AVPN dose if one divides by the dough and the other by the flour.
Against the flour, the EU's 50–55 g of salt is 2.78–3.06% if 1.8 kg is the total, and about 2.5–2.8% if the total is nearer 2 kg.
Yeast doses in the AVPN text are grams of fresh brewer's yeast
Fresh yeast is a moist compressed block; dry yeast is granules, sold as instant or active dry. The AVPN's 0.1–3 g of fresh yeast per litre is about 0.006–0.19% of the flour on our arithmetic. Its own conversion is "1 g dry yeast equals 3g of fresh brewer's yeast". It does not split dry yeast into instant and active dry.
The EU text says only "3 g of brewer's yeast", and the AVPN uses that Italian phrase, lievito di birra, for both fresh and dry. Read as fresh, the EU's 3 g equals the AVPN's maximum. Read as dry, it is 9 g of fresh-equivalent by the AVPN's rule, three times that ceiling.
Water at 60% of the flour recurs in the defaults we checked
Gigacalculator defaults to Neapolitan at 60% hydration, 2.3% salt and 0.08% instant yeast, for "a proofing time of 12h at about 22°C". By the AVPN's 1:3 rule that is 0.24% fresh, 28% above the AVPN ceiling of 0.1875%; its 24-hour figure, 0.025% instant, converts to 0.075%, inside the band. Ooni's Classic Pizza Dough, a popular recipe not labelled Neapolitan, also comes to 60.0% water. Its 8½ g of fresh yeast is 1.39% of the flour, about 7.4 times the AVPN ceiling.
Until 18 October 2026, the Neapolitan preset on our pizza dough calculator credited a "24-48h cold (4°C)" ferment to the AVPN. Its salt hint read "1.8-2.5% typical", the page gave three different Neapolitan hydrations, yeast was instant only, converted to active dry by an unsourced 1.25 times, and one answer said AVPN dough needed 00 flour from two named brands.
The revision that day set the preset at 60% hydration, 2.5% salt and 0.15% fresh yeast, with fresh or dry yeast converted by the AVPN's 1:3 rule. For the default four balls of 250 g it gives 615 g of flour, 369 g of water, 15.4 g of salt and 0.92 g of fresh yeast; a range check marks all three percentages inside the AVPN bands. The 250 g ball sits inside the EU band but matches neither AVPN weight.
Dough under the EU text ferments for a shorter time in lighter balls
The EU method rests the dough for two hours, then four to six more as balls of 180 to 250 g, at a stated dough temperature of 25 °C; the dough, "kept at room temperature, is ready to be used within the next six hours", it says. The AVPN 2024 text, in a file dated February 2024 with no printed effective date, allows 12 to 24 hours in all, at room temperature or in a proofing chamber (a controlled rising cabinet) ideally at 18–20 °C. The 2022 edition allowed 8 to 24 hours, with examples at 23 °C, and the AVPN's recipe page still carries that older window.
Neither text mentions a refrigerator, and with temperatures of 18–20 °C, 23 °C and 25 °C, their "room temperature" is something other than a hot Singapore kitchen.
The AVPN pairs ball weight with size: a 200 g staglio, the portion cut from the bulk dough, for a pizza of 22–24 cm, and 280 g for 28–35 cm. The EU leaves its band and 35 cm maximum unpaired. Area grows with the square of the diameter, as with cake tins, so on our arithmetic the same 280 g covers about 1.56 times the area at 35 cm as at 28 cm.
Oven figures in the two texts reverse floor and dome
The AVPN's 2024 edition gives a base of about 380–430 °C, a dome of about 485 °C and a bake of 60 to 90 seconds, as in 2022. The EU text has "approximately 485 °C" on the cooking floor and "approximately 430 °C" at the dome. The AVPN's recipe page gives 430–480 °C. The two specifications put their hotter figure at opposite ends of the same oven.
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