Dough Ball Weight from Thickness Factor

The thickness factor is dough ounces per square inch of pan, and once a shop knows its crust is right at a factor of 0.10, every pan in the house is one multiplication away: thin crust runs roughly 0.075 to 0.090, a standard hand-tossed 0.095 to 0.11, and a thick or pan style 0.12 and up. The reason to compute rather than eyeball is that area goes as the SQUARE of the diameter. A 16 in pizza is not a third bigger than a 12 in, it is 78% bigger, and a dough ball scaled by diameter comes out visibly thin. At a factor of 0.10 a 16 in pan has an area of pi x 8 x 8 = 201.1 sq in and takes a 20.1 oz ball, a 14 in takes 15.4 oz, a 12 in takes 11.3 oz, and an 18 in takes 25.4 oz. Scaling by diameter instead would have put the 12 in ball at 20.1 x 12 / 16 = 15.1 oz, a third heavy. Given a known-good reference ball and its pan diameter, the second output does the area-ratio conversion directly, so one measured ball produces the whole ladder. A scaling relation, not a recipe; hydration, flour, and the shop's own bake test govern whether the factor is right to begin with.

pan_area_sqin = pi x (diameter_in / 2)^2 for a round pan or length_in x width_in for a rectangular one; dough_weight_oz = thickness_factor x pan_area_sqin; scaled_weight_oz = reference_weight_oz x pan_area_sqin / reference_area_sqin.

The thickness factor (dough ounces per square inch of pan) as taught in standard pizza-industry scaling practice, including the American Institute of Baking technical material and the pizza trade press, by name; the shop's own bake test governs whether the factor is right.

Pan area is geometry and the thickness factor is the shop's own measured constant; nothing here is reproduced from a proprietary source.

Estimate. AHJ and licensed professional govern.

Field names used by the API: pan_shape, diameter_in, length_in, width_in, thickness_factor, reference_weight_oz, reference_diameter_in, pan_area_sqin, dough_weight_oz, scaled_weight_oz

• Thickness factor bands thin roughly 0.075 to 0.090; hand-tossed 0.095 to 0.11; thick or pan 0.12 and up (oz per sq in)pizza-industry scaling practice
• Area, not diameter area goes as the square of the diameter; scaling a dough ball by diameter runs thin on the small pangeometry