How to Stretch Pizza Dough

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. So glad its the weekend so I can make some delicious fall treats. I am so excited for Halloween. Anyways, this week I will be talking about the most important aspect of making a tasty wood fired pizza; How to stretch pizza dough.

Stretching the dough requires patience and practice. Learning how to stretch the dough is so important because you want to attain the right thickness and size. For example, if you stretch the dough too big, you could get a hole when your scooping or cooking the pizza. If the pizza is too small, your not getting every inch worth out of the pizza! Here are the steps on how to stretch pizza dough:

Step 1: Dust semolina and flour onto cutting board. This will give the perfect amount of texture so that you will be able to scoop the pizza with no stickiness. If there isn’t enough flour and semolina on your cutting board, you will create holes when scooping the pizza onto the paddle.

Step 2: Grab a dough-ball from the dough container. Scoop fully underneath hand. If you grab the doughball oddly, you won’t be able to stretch it. After you grab the dough ball, dip both sides flatly in flour. Proceed by patting the dough ball on a cutting board until flat.

Step 3: After you pat your dough-ball flat. Put dough in hands and rotate the crust with your fingers, with a steering wheel motion. You want to stretch the crust first because this will help prep the dough for stretching in the middle.

Step 4: Next, put the dough fully resting on your knuckles. Your going to want to stretch the middle, not by pulling, but by whipping it in a circular motion. Use your knuckles to stretch the dough. Once the dough is partially stretched this is when you can toss the dough into the air. Simply rotate your knuckles and fling into the air. Catch with your knuckles of course! Go back to the crust if its not stretched enough. Keep whipping or tossing the dough with your knuckles back and forth until desired size (around 10-12 in). Pay attention to how thin the crust is. If you get a hole, patch the dough by folding it onto each other and pay close attention to that sensitive spot.

Step 5: Put the dough down on the cutting board and there you go, you are ready to put toppings on your pizza! Thanks for reading! If you have any questions feel free to comment 🙂 The goal here is to teach my audience how to make a perfect pizza, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.