Start here
Boccalone is a pizza reference built around the numbers that decide a bake: hydration, dough temperature, fermentation time and temperature, and bake conditions. Pick the route below that matches the problem in front of you.
Dough and fermentation · Troubleshooting by symptom
In short
New to measuring dough? Start with baker's percentages. A pizza just went wrong? Start with the symptom. Choosing an oven or a style? Start with what your oven can actually do. Whatever you bake, record it, so the next attempt can be compared with this one.
If you are new to pizza dough
Learn the notation before the recipes. Baker's percentages express every ingredient relative to flour weight, which is what makes two formulas comparable and any formula scalable.
- Baker's percentages for pizza
- The four numbers that decide your pizza crust
- Dough and fermentation hub
If a pizza just went wrong
Go by the symptom you can see, not by the ingredient you suspect. The troubleshooting hub lists the causes for each defect with a test that tells them apart.
- Troubleshooting hub
- Pizza troubleshooting by symptom
- The gum line: five causes of a raw layer under your sauce
If you are choosing an oven or a style
Every oven has a ceiling, and some styles sit above it. Check which styles your current setup can produce before buying anything.
- Which pizza style should you learn first?
- What your home oven can and cannot do
- Ovens and equipment
- Pizza styles
If you want to repeat a good bake
Write the formula in baker's percentages and record the conditions alongside it: dough temperature, every fermentation stage with its temperature, the surface and its preheat, and what came out.
- Formula worksheet
- How to log a bake so you can repeat it
- Why the same recipe gives different results
How to read this site
Every figure on Boccalone cites a published source or is a field for you to fill in from your own bake. Where no established figure exists, the page says so instead of inventing one. Boccalone has no test kitchen and publishes no house formula as tested.
Where to go next
Frequently asked questions
Do I need special equipment to start?
No. A digital scale and a thermometer will change your results more than any oven upgrade. The equipment hub explains why, and which styles a domestic oven can produce.
Is there a recipe I can just follow?
Boccalone publishes no house formula, because none has a dated bake record behind it. The style references give each style's conventions, and the formula worksheet shows how to write and scale your own formula in baker's percentages.
I came here looking for the San Francisco salumeria.
This is a different, unconnected pizza publication that shares only the word in the web address. The not-the-salumeria page explains in full.
Start with the dough
The dough hub explains the four variables every other section of the site refers back to.