By Charlie Pogacar
If you’ve witnessed a chapter of Chris Townsend’s pizza dough experiment on Instagram—where he goes by Dough Ball Disco—you aren’t alone. In January, the amateur pizza maker began a quest to see how high he can bring the hydration of his dough “until it breaks,” and the series has attracted 20 million views since its inception. Townsend—an Ooni ambassador—credits the experiment with grown his following from around 50,000 to over 67,000 (and counting).
Townsend started the experiment with 70% hydration—hardly unprecedented and just a bit higher than his standard 67% hydration dough. As the months have passed, Townsend keeps putting out new “episodes”—he’s up to 13 in all—upping the hydration by 5% increments to see when his dough becomes completely untenable.
He may be getting close to an answer: On May 13, Townsend posted his 13th episode in which he attempts to make pizza using 130% dough hydration. The result can barely be called pizza at all.
Related: This Pizza Pop-Up Influencer Has Over 100,000 Followers. His Secret Isn’t What You’d Expect
But let’s back up. Townsend, who lives in Bournemouth, England—near his hometown of Southampton—has spent over two decades in advertising. He currently holds a role as creative director at a London-based advertising agency and has won many awards for his work, including at the Webby’s and the Cannes Lions Festival—an event he was asked to speak at in 2019.
Townsend began cooking pizza on the side as an amateur and, like so many others, logged the results on Instagram. As he built up a following and became an Ooni ambassador, his pizza making hobby became a bit more serious. Too serious, perhaps: In late 2024, Townsend was feeling like he was in a pizza slump. He knew he had gotten pretty good at making pizza, but he worried his content was growing stale. Perhaps more importantly, creating content felt like a chore. That’s when he had an epiphany.
“I kind of realized I’m not a trained chef, and I don’t own a restaurant,” Townsend said. “And actually, that’s quite freeing because I don’t always have to make perfect pizzas. My journey has been about learning pizza and learning my craft.”
This led Townsend to an idea: What if he started a mini video series where he was experimenting in a provocative way? And, as he considered a dough hydration experiment, his advertising mind kicked into overdrive: How do you create drama? How do you make viewers want to keep coming back? That’s where the very simple phrase “until it breaks” came into play. He wasn’t just experimenting—Townsend was going to break stuff.
The hydration experiment was inarguably enhanced by a catchy theme song he wrote with a friend. The song has its own unique origin story. “I was chatting to my friend going, ‘I’ve got a title, I’m gonna make a series,’” Townsend told PMQ. “So I was like, it’s not just about making high hydration. I’m gonna add more water to my pizza dough until it breaks. And my mate—we’re in a WhatsApp group—said, ‘Oh man, you’ve got to make a theme tune.’”
“But obviously I’ve got no talent in that area,” Townsend added. “But he had been playing with Suno AI, and he’s my friend Tommy Genoa—he’s a bit of a musician. So we wrote the words of the song together and then used AI to create the music.”
The outcome is a disco-themed earworm liable to get stuck in one’s head for an entire weekend (ask this senior editor how he knows). The song’s chorus is a simple refrain: “I’m adding more water to my pizza dough, until it breaks, until it breaks.” Many of the top commenters on Townsend’s posts have demanded that the song be put on Spotify for everyday listening.
“I had no idea whether or not people would like the song,” Townsend said. “But when I posted it, everyone was like, ‘What’s this…what’s this [freaking] song?”
The clamors were so loud, Townsend had two vinyl copies of the song pressed, complete with intricate album artwork he designed on his own. He held a giveaway for one of the vinyl copies and kept one for himself. The entire song can now be streamed on Instagram or Soundcloud.
While the hydration series has been lighthearted, it has also taught Townsend a lot about making pizza. As he upped the levels of hydration, comments and DMs from pizza pros poured in. They suggested ways to tweak his dough recipe to sustain the increasing levels of hydration. “Have you tried using a longer water line,” they inquired? “Use cold water, lower the yeast to control the fermentation,” he was told. Others implored him to use higher protein flour and to drop his oven temperature.
Townsend’s normal bake temperature is 430° Celsius, or just over 800° Fahrenheit. In order to cook high-hydration dough, he’s learned to drop the temperature down to 330° Celsius (or about 600° Fahrenheit).
“I’ve learned the importance of certain flours and how that affects the gluten network and how it’s built up,” Townsend said. “I’ve learned to make sure my sourdough is absolutely at its peak power. When your hydration gets that high, every little factor starts to mess with the results of the day. The impact gets magnified.”
But the biggest thing the experiment has taught Townsend? When you know all of those things and you become more intimately acquainted with all of the variables that go into pizza dough, returning to a sane level of hydration feels like child’s play.
“I think the best outcome of this experiment has been going back to 70% [hydration] to make a Neapolitan pizza, has felt like making with 50% hydration dough,” Townsend wrote on Instagram. “And I think I made my best Neapolitan pizza I’ve made for a long time [as a result].”
It seems there’s another outcome from the experiment that has been just as valuable. If you haven’t picked up on it, Townsend’s love for pizza—and creating content surrounding it—has been reinvigorated. It’s helped him reestablish his identity as a fun-loving, analytical mind seeking to push the limits of what pizza can be—and to show what great storytelling can do in the heavily saturated world of pizza on Instagram.
As tens of thousands of disco-loving fans have followed along, they’ve waited with bated breath to see if an amateur pizza maker can continue pushing the limits. It took 13 glorious episodes, but it appears Chris Townsend’s pizza dough finally broke.
“I’m not sure I can make it past 130 [hydration],” Townsend told PMQ this week. “Even with 125, I was on the ropes. I have a lot of disappointed followers who want me to try it again. And I might give 130 another go, but I think it’s the end of the road.”
The problem now? A sophomore album.
