Making pizza dough is easy! You just mix a few ingredients (flour + water + yeast + salt + olive oil), and ta da!
The hard part is shaping the pizza dough. If you've ever made homemade pizza, you can probably remember feeling frustrated and defeated as the dough ripped and bounced back into a tiny little circle, instead of that big perfectly round one you get from the local pizza place.
Luckily, we've got some tips to help you master your pizza game once and for all.
- Be patient. It's not always easy, because you. want. pizza. NOW! But pizza dough gets kind of...shy. The more attention you give it, the more it wants to shrink back and hide. So if your dough is hard to stretch, put it on the counter, cover it with a towel so it doesn't dry out, and walk away for ten to fifteen minutes. We bet it'll be better when you get back.
- It's all about gravity. Instead of pulling on the dough, which is going to make it want to shrink back, let the dough stretch itself. Grasp the dough with both hands at 10:00 and 2:00. Let the dough hang down so that its own weight stretches the circle. Slowly move the dough in a circle, keeping your hands in the same position, so that it stretches in an even circle.
- Palms down! Our fingers are usually our best tools, but when it comes to pizza down, you'll get better results using the back of your hands. Use your fingers at the beginning (see Step 2! ^), but once it starts to become thinner, flip your hands over and let the pizza drape along your knuckles. Check out this guy's form:
- Perfect does not = circle. Sometimes pizzas are circles; sometimes they are not. Don't get hung up on the shape of your pizza, because it will taste amazing whether it is a circle, a square, a rectangle, or a multi-sided blob with ten holes in it.
- Start adding toppings. If you feel like you've hit a dead end with your stretching, put your pizza on the baking sheet and start adding your toppings. Once you have some sauce and toppings, the pizza will stop shrinking so dramatically, and you'll probably even be able to stretch it again.
- Hot hot hot! Bake your pizza in a very hot oven, using a pizza stone if you have one. A pizza stone is a flat, stone surface that you can preheat in your oven as a hot place to cook your pizza. It replicates the super hot stone surface of professional pizza ovens. But you don't need one, and a hot oven (425 or even higher!) will cook your pizza quickly for a crispy crust.
Do you feel ready? Try our cute Mini Calzones or our favorite non-traditional pie, Prosciutto and Egg Pizza!
Your pizza dough recipe said 1/4 cup olive as an ingredient. However, it never said to add the olive oil when it said to add flours to the yeast water. So I didn’t. I just lightly oiled another bowl. Then I watched your video and the Chef dumped in the whole quarter cup of olive oil. Why didn’t you say to add it before mixing. Or was it a mistake.
Yes, sorry — a mistake! We’ve updated the recipe. Luckily, olive oil is not essential in the pizza dough, so hopefully your dough still turned out great!