Although pizza is a fairly popular food that everyone wants, more individuals are now learning to master the art of baking delicious pizza at home!

A huge benefit is you can add your ingredients to how you would prefer it and avoid additives that you don’t like. Besides, making pizza at home is quite fun, especially if you’re enthusiastic about cooking and baking.

If you’re the type interested in making the dough at home and looking for ways to stretch it properly, you’ve come to the right place. So, if your pizza dough won’t stretch, then follow our useful tips and bake the perfect pizza at home!

Tips for Stretching Pizza Dough

Apart from the ingredients that are required for pizza preparation, the most important part is the base. The pizza dough you need for your perfect pizza should be soft and elastic enough so that you can stretch it widely.

Stretching Pizza Dough

If it is not stretchable enough, you cannot form a proper base. When you’re stretching dough at home, sometimes you will face the dough tearing or shrink to a smaller size. So, if your pizza dough won’t stretch correctly, here are some tips that will help you:

1. Ensure the Correct Temperature

The most important thing to consider when you’re trying to stretch the pizza dough is to ensure that the temperature is right. If your pizza is not stretching well, it means that the dough is still cool and not soft enough.

This happens due to the gluten present in the dough. When your dough is still cold, the lower temperature causes the gluten to tighten and shrink the size of the dough. To solve this problem, the only method that works is increasing the temperature surrounding the dough.

Stretch Pizza Dough

If you’ve taken your dough out of the freezer, place it in a large bowl by spraying both the bowl and dough with oil. If you’re unfamiliar about defrosting the pizza dough, you can check how to defrost frozen pizza dough and learn about it. After you’ve sprayed some oil, wrap it with plastic, and keep it aside for an hour.

It will cause the temperature warm enough to soften the dough. You can stretch it easily when it’s soft enough.

2. Try Olive Oil

If the cold temperature is not the problem, it might be the consistency of the dough. Sometimes the consistency of the dough is not soft enough for stretching it out. Sprinkling flour may not solve the problem as it adds to the hard consistency of the dough. This is where olive oil comes handy.

Around 3 tablespoons of olive oil sometimes do the trick, but you can add more or less depending on how tough the dough is. Smearing the oil over the dough and your hands and stretching it later gives the best results. It makes the dough softer and gives it a more defined surface.

Thus, when you’re ready to bake, the soft consistency does not tend to go away. It also adds a crisp golden brown color after baking is done.

3. Press the Pizza Dough

Another technique to stretch your pizza out is to press it beforehand. Pressing it firmly will give the dough a more defined structure. When the dough is flattened enough, press it down with your ring, index, and middle finger to give it the shape of a disc.

With the three fingers, try pressing the dough across the center so that the flat disc is wide enough to form a large circle.

Pizza Dough

Measure the thickness of the dough with your fingers so that it is approximately half an inch thick. You don’t need a completely round disc; you just need to stretch it as long as it forms a good enough pizza base.

If the dough shrinks during this process, place a towel over it and set it aside for half an hour and start again. At one point, it will not shrink anymore, and your pizza dough will be ready to bake.

4. Use Both Hands and Gravity

Using both hands and gravity to stretch pizza is tossing it up on the air. It’s not exactly an easy process as it requires years of practice. You might not be able to do it at home on your first try, but it is one of the best ways to perfectly stretch pizza dough!

Take one part from the side of the dough using both hands and allow the remaining part to drop down in straight alignment. Don’t worry because you won’t have to stretch it below. Gravity will be doing it. As miraculous as it sounds, this is actually what happens.

Stretching Pizza Dough

Pass the dough along with your fingers until all the portions of the dough have been uniformly stretched out.

Repeating the process until each side of the dough is stretched will ensure a perfect pizza base.

5. Stretch on the Pizza Pan

This is the final part of the act when you’re almost ready to bake your pizza. Before moving on to placing it on the pizza pan, check for any thin holes or areas. If your pizza has such areas, press the dough firmly with your fingers to close them and bring the dough surface together. If there are any thick areas, gently flatten them.

In all cases, you should keep in mind that the pizza base should be closer to 1/3rd of an inch in thickness. Place it along with the pizza pan evenly, sprinkle some cheese, pour some marinara sauce, and load it with your favorite toppings.

Stretching Pizza

And your desired pizza will be ready in no time. When you’re done baking, check your dough consistency, and you will be pleased to see how soft the base turned out! With the aid of these beneficial and easy tips, you can stretch your pizza dough perfectly at home and enjoy delicious homemade pizza.

Conclusion

Bringing it to an end, it can be said that making pizza at home can be hard to deal with if your dough does not stretch enough.

So, if your pizza dough won’t stretch, there is nothing to worry about. Our tips will be useful enough for you in the kitchen. You can perfectly stretch your hard and cold pizza dough in no time and prepare an amazing pizza at home using your desired ingredients.