Glossary

The vocabulary of the dough bench and the oven — every term you’ll hit in the guides, defined the way they’re used here.

Hydration

Water as a percentage of flour weight. 60% means 600g water per 1000g flour. The single most important number in your dough — higher is wetter, more open, and harder to handle.

Cold Ferment

Proofing dough in the fridge for 24-72 hours instead of hours on the counter. Slows yeast, builds flavor and extensibility. The cheapest quality upgrade in pizza.

Poolish

A wet pre-ferment (equal flour and water by weight, tiny yeast) mixed hours ahead, then built into the final dough. Adds aroma and extensibility.

Biga

A stiff pre-ferment, drier than poolish. Italian tradition’s answer to the same question — more strength, slightly different flavor profile.

Oven Spring

The rapid puff of the cornicione in the first seconds of the bake, driven by steam and heat. What you lose when the stone is too cold or the dough is over-proofed.

Leoparding

The pattern of small dark blisters on a Neapolitan crust from a fast, hot bake. A sign of good fermentation and proper stone temperature — distinct from uniform burning.

Biscotto

A soft, porous clay stone from the Naples region that runs gentler on the base than cordierite at the same temperature. The classic fix for burnt bottoms in 450°C+ electric ovens.

Stone Temp

The surface temperature of the baking stone, read with an IR thermometer. The launch-decision number — air temperature lies, stone temperature doesn’t.

Recovery Time

How long the stone needs between bakes to climb back to target temperature. The spec that actually separates oven classes when you’re baking for more than two people.

Heat Soak

Running the oven well past “the flame is on” so the dome and stone mass are fully saturated with heat. Skipping it is why first pizzas disappoint.

Launch

Sliding the built pizza from peel to stone. The moment of highest failure probability in the entire craft — flour management and commitment beat hesitation every time.

Turning Cadence

How often you rotate the pie during the bake — every 15-25 seconds in a hot dome oven where the flame side bakes far faster than the mouth side.

00 Flour

Finely milled Italian flour graded by milling fineness, not strength. The Neapolitan default — but the W-strength number on the bag matters more than the 00 label.

W-Strength

A flour’s strength rating from dough rheology testing. Higher W tolerates longer ferments. Long cold ferments want W280+; weak flour collapses before the bake.

Char vs Burn

Char is flavor concentrated in spots — leoparding, edge blisters. Burn is bitterness across the whole base, usually a stone-too-hot or flour-on-the-stone problem. The line between them is the bake’s whole game.