Impasto: Plan great pizza dough

How it works

Three taps from craving to a plan.

Most dough calculators hand you a list of grams and leave you to figure out the timing. Impasto starts with your schedule and builds the recipe around it.

Il tempo · the timeline

Every step, at the exact hour it happens.

No more "rest for 4 hours" and mental arithmetic. Impasto shows "Fri 14:00", not "after 4 hours." Filled dots are the moments you do something; hollow dots are the long waits while the dough does the work.

• Real clock times for every mix, fold, shape and bake.
• A live "Now" marker follows your bake in real time, so you always know the current step at a glance.
• Sleep-aware scheduling that spots steps that land overnight and offers a gentle shift.
• Optional reminders so you can get on with your day.

La ricetta · the recipe

Precise to the gram, scaled to your batch.

Flour, water, salt, oil, sugar and yeast, all calculated to the gram and shown as baker's percentages. Change the number of pizzas or the ball weight and everything recalculates on the spot.

• Full preferment maths for poolish, biga and sourdough levain, handled for you.
• Tune hydration, salt, oil and sugar to taste.
• Metric or imperial, your units.

La farina · the flour

The right flour, with real-world picks.

Impasto matches the strength your recipe actually needs to flours you can buy, using W-value, P/L ratio and protein, then names specific bags and blends.

• Named picks: Caputo, King Arthur, Le 5 Stagioni, Polselli and more.
• Blend suggestions for long fermentations.
• Substitutes when your first choice isn't on the shelf.

La temperatura · dough temperature

Water to the degree. Temperature is a recipe too.

Great dough should finish mixing at the right temperature: too warm and it races ahead, too cold and it stalls. Impasto back-calculates the exact water temperature to hit that target, reading your kitchen's warmth and the way you mix, then drops the number straight into the mix step.

• Aims for a ~24°C final dough, the sweet spot for clean, predictable fermentation.
• Reads your kitchen: a hot room gets cooler water, a cold room gets warmer.
• Knows your mixer: hands, stand mixer and food processor each add different friction heat, so the water shifts to match.
• Preferments and cold retards are folded in too, with no side maths, ever.

Il lievito madre · sourdough

It solves the levain, not just the yeast.

Most dough apps hand sourdough back to you: pick your own starter percentage, guess your own timings, hope. Impasto treats natural leavening the way it treats yeast, as something to be solved, so the dough is still ready exactly when you said you wanted to eat.

La matematica · the maths

A cool kitchen needs more starter. Impasto works out how much.

Fermentation roughly doubles in speed every 9°C, so the same 10% levain that lands an overnight bulk at 21°C will leave you waiting at 16°C. Rather than making you guess, Impasto inverts the curve and solves the percentage that hits your schedule in your kitchen.

• Same overnight plan, four kitchens: 14% at 16°C, 11% at 18°C, 8% at 21°C, 4% at 26°C.
• It does the seed maths too: how much ripe starter to scoop, and how much flour and water to feed it, without double-counting a gram.
• Stiff or liquid starter, 50% to 100% hydration, with the water shifted correctly between levain and final dough.

La forza · starter strength

The one thing no app can measure.

Every culture is different: your flour, your water, your feeding schedule. Impasto can solve for temperature, but it cannot know how lively your jar is. So it asks, in the only terms that matter, and stretches or shortens the room-temperature steps to match.

• Weak, average or strong. A sluggish starter gets more time; a vigorous one gets less.
• It never touches the cold retard, because at 4°C the culture is parked no matter how strong it is.
• Every timing is paired with a dough cue: domed and risen 2–3×, up 20–30%, roughly doubled. Trust the dough, not the clock.

L'ambiente · the environment

Fridge or counter. We don't pick a side.

Ask ten sourdough bakers whether pizza dough belongs in the fridge and you'll get a genuine, well-argued split. Some retard the balls for two days and get a sharper, tangier crust. Others insist the fridge dulls everything and run a long, cool ferment on the counter. Both are legitimate, so Impasto builds a proper schedule for either.

• Cold retard: bulk to a 20–30% rise, ball up, then 12 to 72 hours in the fridge. The long chill favours acetic acid, so the crust reads sharper.
• Room temperature: no fridge at all. Warmth favours lactic acid, so the sourness stays rounder and more yoghurty.
• The flavour notes and flour picks change with your choice, because a natural ferment slackens gluten differently than yeast does.

Built with the people who bake it

Designed from real bakes, not a textbook.

The timings are a plan, calibrated on real bakes and paired with cues so you can read the dough rather than the clock. Your starter is not my starter, and Impasto says so.

A real schedule

Here's a Neapolitan poolish, baking Sunday at 7pm.

This is what Impasto builds for you. Read top to bottom, act on the filled dots, relax on the hollow ones.

Seven styles

Tuned to your oven and your taste.

Each style carries its own dough behaviour, hydration range and oven profile, whether you've got a pizza oven, a regular kitchen one, or a battered steel pan.

And the rest

Built to live in your kitchen.

A look inside

Considered, warm, uncluttered.

From first setup to a late-night bake, every screen stays calm, legible and out of your way.