Guide · Planning
How many pizzas you need per person
The sum nobody does before inviting eight people over.
Count one 250 g pizza per adult and half a pizza per child, then add a whole pizza for every big eater. Eight adults need 8 dough balls: about 1.2 kg of flour, 720 g of mozzarella and 640 ml of tomato. When a pizza night goes wrong it's rarely the dough — it's the shopping.
You can make the dough, or you'll learn it in half an hour of reading. The real problem lands earlier, in that moment at the counter when you're holding two balls of mozzarella and you genuinely don't know whether they're enough. Get it slightly wrong and either the last pizza comes out white because the tomato ran out, or half a kilo of mozzarella sits in the fridge judging you for three days.
The rule, in two lines
- Adult: one pizza. A 250 g ball, which opens to about 30 cm.
- Child: half a pizza. Under ten, there's usually still some left.
- Big eater: one extra pizza. You know at least one.
Always round up. One more dough ball costs pennies and saves the evening. One fewer can't be fixed, because by the time you notice, the dough has been rising for eight hours.
What to buy, by number of people
This table puts both halves of the sum together: the dough quantities and the toppings. The dough comes from our own calculator, Neapolitan style, 12 hours at 22 °C; the mozzarella and tomato are the per-pizza amounts our pizza-night planner uses.
| Adults | Pizzas | Flour | Water | Salt | Yeast | Mozzarella | Tomato |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 2 | 311 g | 180 g | 9 g | 0.3 g | 180 g | 160 g |
| 4 | 4 | 622 g | 360 g | 18 g | 0.6 g | 360 g | 320 g |
| 6 | 6 | 932 g | 541 g | 27 g | 1 g | 540 g | 480 g |
| 8 | 8 | 1.2 kg | 721 g | 36 g | 1.3 g | 720 g | 640 g |
| 10 | 10 | 1.6 kg | 901 g | 45 g | 1.6 g | 900 g | 800 g |
| 12 | 12 | 1.9 kg | 1.1 kg | 54 g | 1.9 g | 1.1 kg | 960 g |
Dough computed with our own engine; mozzarella and tomato are our planner’s per-pizza defaults (90 g and 80 ml), which you can change in the app.
These are quantities for a margherita. If you're making two or three different toppings the flour total doesn't change — only how you split the toppings does. And if someone's bringing wine instead of an appetite, drop a ball.
The three mistakes people always make
- Counting pizzas instead of ingredients. Knowing you need eight pizzas doesn't tell you how much mozzarella to buy. They're two different sums, and the second one is the one that catches you out.
- Forgetting that children eat less but still want their own. Half a pizza each in the sum, a whole pizza on the plate: make it small, not halved.
- Leaving the dough to the last minute. It's the one ingredient you can't pick up on the way home. With 12 hours ahead of you it needs barely any yeast; with two hours it needs four times as much and the pizza tastes of beer. The calculator tells you when to start.
Frequently asked questions
How much dough for 4 people?
Four 250 g balls, so a kilo of dough: about 620 g of flour and 360 g of water. With children, scale down to half a pizza each.
How much mozzarella per pizza?
About 90 g per pizza for a margherita — a generous 125 g ball covers a pizza and a half. For eight pizzas count 720 g. Go to 100 g with bufala, since it releases more water.
How many pizzas for 10 people?
Ten pizzas if they're all adults: 2.5 kg of dough, roughly 1.6 kg of flour, 900 g of mozzarella and 800 ml of tomato. Add one pizza for every declared big eater.
What if I don't know how many are actually coming?
Make dough for the maximum and keep the balls in the fridge. An unopened ball keeps an extra day quite happily; a missing pizza at the table doesn't.