New York Style Pizza Dough: The Science Behind the Fold

A New York slice is thin but not as thin as Neapolitan, and never cracker-like. Modernist Pizza describes a crust with a snap to it that’s still pliable enough that, when you pick up a slice, the tip droops a little: “a walk-and-talk slice,” in pizza tour guide Scott Wiener’s phrase. It’s nicely browned with few char marks, and the sauce sits under a blanket of cheese.

That’s the fold. Everything about the dough below is aimed at it: enough strength that a wide, thin slice holds itself up, and enough bake that the base stays crisp under the toppings.

The formula

This is Ken Forkish’s 48- to 72-Hour New York Pizza Dough from The Elements of Pizza. Its baker’s percentages are the ones the Pizza Planner uses for its New York preset.

That makes three dough balls of about 278 g, which Forkish stretches to about 12 inches. The Planner sizes dough by the pizza’s area at the same thickness, so its numbers come out slightly differently:

Forkish’s balls are about 6 g heavier than the Planner’s for 12 inches, too little to change the bake; either works. A New York pizzeria pie is about 18 inches, much too big for a home oven, which is why home recipes scale it down.

Why each number is where it is

High-protein bread flour

Forkish specifies high-protein bread flour for this dough, where most of his other recipes use 00 or all-purpose flour with moderate protein. The stronger flour and the stiffer dough, he writes, give a crisp crust that won’t sag, as long as you don’t overdo the sauce. The “00” on an Italian bag won’t tell you how strong a flour is: Modernist Pizza explains that the Italian grades are set by ash content, which tracks how refined the flour is, not how finely it’s milled. Check the protein figure rather than the label.

Some American bread flours contain malted barley flour, which helps browning. Central Milling’s Organic Type 85 Malted Flour, for example, lists organic malted barley flour as its treatment (checked October 14, 2026). Check the bag. The Planner doesn’t add malt to a recipe; it only asks whether your flour is malted. If you want to understand what malt does, see diastatic malt.

64% water

New York pizzas bake at a lower temperature for longer than Neapolitan ones, so the crust loses more moisture and comes out crisper. Forkish’s home Neapolitan-style doughs run at about 70% water to stay tender over a 7-minute bake; this one is drier on purpose. In Modernist Pizza’s tests of its own New York formula, changing the hydration by five percentage points either way worked, but a change of ten points made pizzas that were hard to shape and, once shaped, didn’t hold their shape well. That’s a finding about the book’s dough, not a handling limit for every recipe.

A stiff dough is hard work by hand. Forkish recommends a stand mixer with the dough hook for about 90 seconds on the slowest speed, and warns against overmixing, which makes the baked crust elastic and tough. To mix by hand, hold back 100 g of the flour, mix in the rest until no dry flour is left, then work in the remainder in stages.

Two to three days in the fridge

Forkish calls the long refrigeration a standard practice in good New York pizzerias. The slow, cold fermentation builds flavor and mild acidity and lets the proteins in the dough break down just enough, which gives a more delicate crust. Because the dough isn’t as actively fermented, the rim stays flatter than a Neapolitan one and the toppings stay out near the edge. His balls are best at 2 days and still good on the third. For more on what happens in the cold, see cold fermentation.

Oil and sugar: optional

Plenty of New York recipes add a little oil, sugar or both. Forkish’s dough has neither; his only sweetness is a spoonful of sugar in the cooked sauce. Modernist Pizza’s own New York dough includes 3.39% fat, and its tests found anywhere from none to 10% made good pizza. The book also notes that doughs with some oil reheat better, which is why pizzas sold by the slice usually contain it. If you often reheat leftover slices, adding oil at around Modernist Pizza’s 3% is reasonable; weigh it in alongside the water. If you bake and eat straight away, leave it out. The Planner’s New York preset has no oil.

Make it

Time: about 20 minutes of active work, a 2-hour rise, 48 to 72 hours in the fridge, then about 90 minutes out of the fridge before baking.

Ingredients (three 12-inch pizzas)

• 500 g high-protein bread flour
• 320 g water at 90°F (32°C)
• 14 g fine sea salt
• 1.2 g instant yeast

Method

1. Combine. Put the water in the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve the salt in it, then add the yeast, let it hydrate for a minute and swirl to dissolve. Add the flour.
2. Mix. Mix with the dough hook on the slowest speed for about 90 seconds, just until the dough comes together. Don’t overmix. Forkish aims for a dough temperature of 78 to 80°F (26 to 27°C) at the end of the mix.
3. Rise. Move the dough to a lightly oiled container, cover and leave at room temperature for 2 hours. It will grow by about 40 to 50 percent.
4. Divide and ball. Divide into 3 equal pieces of about 278 g and shape each into a medium-tight ball.
5. Refrigerate. Set the balls on lightly floured plates with room to spread, flour the tops lightly, cover and refrigerate for 48 to 72 hours. They’re best at about 2 days.
6. Warm up. Take the dough balls out of the refrigerator about 90 minutes before you bake, so the gluten relaxes enough to stretch.
7. Preheat. Heat a baking steel or stone on an upper rack at 500 to 550°F (260 to 288°C) for 45 to 60 minutes.
8. Stretch and bake. Stretch each ball to about 12 inches by hand, leaving a narrower rim than you would for Neapolitan, top it and bake for 8 to 12 minutes, until the crust is golden-brown with darker spots underneath.

For toppings, the Pizza Calculator starts a 12-inch New York pizza at about 70 to 95 g of sauce and 60 to 100 g of low-moisture mozzarella, and a 14-inch at about 95 to 130 g of sauce and 80 to 140 g of cheese.

The bake

The Planner’s home-oven window for New York pizza is 8 to 12 minutes with the oven at 500 to 550°F, after a 45- to 60-minute preheat. Forkish gives two versions, both with the steel or stone no more than 8 inches below the broiler:

• Crisp, with almost no tip sag: bake at 550°F for about 9 to 10 minutes without using the broiler, until golden-brown with spots of dark brown.
• A little softer in the middle and easier to fold: bake 5 minutes at 550°F, then switch to the broiler for about 2 minutes, checking after 1.

Check that your oven allows the broiler to be used this way, and never put parchment under a broiler. The baking steel guide covers preheating a steel properly.

Reading the fold

Pick up a slice by the rim. If the tip droops a little and the slice folds lengthwise without cracking, you’re there. If not:

• Floppy, wet underneath: usually too much sauce or too short a bake. Forkish notes this stiff dough won’t sag unless the sauce is overdone. Bake longer or sauce more lightly.
• Stiff and cracks when folded: baked too long or too hot for the thickness. Try the broiler-finish version, which leaves the middle softer.
• Dense and tough: overmixed, or the dough was still cold when you stretched it. Mix only until it comes together and give the balls their full time out of the fridge.
• Pale underneath: the steel or stone wasn’t fully heated. Give it the whole preheat.

If the problem is something else, the Pizza Doctor works through it from what you see.

Sources

• Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016): chapter 6, “48- to 72-Hour New York Pizza Dough” (formula, mixing, rise, refrigeration, dough-ball size); chapter 7, “New York Cheese Pizza” and “New York Pizza Sauce” (pizza size, the two bake methods, the sweetened sauce); chapter 3, “Match the Dough and Its Hydration to the Oven” (hydration and baking temperature, hand-mixing stiff doughs).
• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: page 136 (the New York style), page 279 (Italian flour grades and ash content), page 289 (hydration tests on New York dough), pages 316–317 and 319 (fat in New York dough, oil and reheating).
• Central Milling, Organic Type 85 Malted Flour: flour treatment with organic malted barley flour. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Dough-ball weights for each size and the topping ranges are calculated with the site’s pizza engine.