We built an outdoor pizza oven but we really need about 10 people to make a pizza party worthwhile: it takes about a wheelbarrow load of wood for the evening and 2 hours to heat up. Once going, it runs about 900-1000F, cooking the pizzi in about 1-2 minutes (proper Napolitano style). When folks are done making pizza, we let it cool, make bread at about 500F, then cool again and put a roast or pot of beans or stew in to cook overnight -- it'll be about 250F the next morning.
I wanted to come up with proportions for pizza dough that would be easy to measure and scale for a crowd this size, and max it out with our equipment's capacity. Here's the math then the final numbers.
Dough hydration (bakers' percentage: mass of water divided by mass of flour) should be 66-70%.
My Kitchenaid stand mixer can handle about 1Kg of flour at that hydration.
TODO: REWORK THE MATH TO START WITH 1660 - 1700g dough in bowl, then divide by an even 12 balls at 138-142g/ball. If people can eat 2.5 balls, that's 4.8 people per bucket.
I used to figure 3 pizzi per person but we've had a lot of leftover dough, so here I'm backing that out to 2.5 p/p, assuming 142g (5 ounce) uncooked pizzi dough balls per person.
Dough at 66% hydration:
(2.5 * 142g) dough/person = 1 * X flour + 0.66 * X water
355g dough/person = X * (1 + 0.66) = X * 1.66
X = 355 / 1.66 = 214g
Flour: 1 * X = 214g
Water: 0.66 * X = 141g
Dough at 70% hydration, likewise:
X = 355 / 1.70 = 209g flour and 146g water person
If the Kitchenaid can do about 1Kg flour per bowl, we can get 2.8 people at 355g 66% hydration.
Let's round down the dough balls a bit so we can round up the people to a full 3:
1000g / 3people = 333g/person is 201g flour and 132g water per person,
and each person eats 2.5 dough balls, so 333g dough /1.66 = 201g flour and 132g water.
Whew!
I bulk ferment in 2 liter buckets, and this will hold 1000g flour and 66 g water, so for one bucket that feeds 3 people, we get:
1000 g Flour, Caputo 00
660 g Water, cold (for 66% hydration)
1 Tbs Yeast
2 Tbs Salt, Kosher, coarse
I use a low-knead long-rise ferment, so combine those in the Kitchenaid until all the flour is incorporated.
Dump into fermenting buckets and let rise over night for 1 to 3 nights in the refrigerator.
Take dough out of chill about 3 hours before eating time (it takes 2-3 hours to preheat the overn).
Divide and form into dough balls
I'm doing some fuzzy-math here because I don't want fractional dough balls.
If we can handle 1000g flour and 660g water, we've got 1660g dough.
Divide by a nice round dozen and we get 1660g dough / 12 balls = 138g / dough ball.
So make 12 dough balls, each 138g.
I put them on the lid of an under-bed box, and cover with the bottom of the box to keep the dough from drying out. I've seen others putting each ball into separate plastic tubs, but that's a lot of tubs.
Mist with oil and let rise until ready to shape and bake.
