Do your homemade pizzas look more like a map of South America than a circle? It's a common problem that occurs during shaping; sometimes the dough stretches too much in one part, too little in another, and suddenly your pie turns into a (still delicious) polygon.
But worry no more! Here's how to make round pizzas, every time.
Round pizza starts with round dough
To make a round pizza, set yourself up for success before you start rolling out the dough. If you start with a round ball of dough, all you have to do is keep that shape. Start with an unformed patch in place? You can guess what might happen.
John Sherman
Pay attention to the preform
A round ball of pizza dough begins with preforming. As its name implies, preform comes before shaping. It usually involves dividing the dough after bulk fermentation (first lift) and forming it into a free circle. The dough is then left on the counter for 10 to 15 minutes, which gives the gluten time to relax. This resting period makes it easier to roll out the pizza dough without rolling back.
Do not skip this step or consider adding it to your pizza dough recipe. Here are the instructions for how to preform.
Stretch by hand – not with a needle
A rolling pin is not the best choice for rolling pizza dough. Using a rolling pin to stretch and shape can cause irregular sections and uneven edges. (Plus, it'll make it hard to keep a puffy outer crust, something you want for pizza that's nice to look at and easy to eat.) Always use your hands instead. to gently stretch and shape your pizza.
Follow the advice of King Arthur's baker Martin Philip and start by pressing, not pulling. As he shows in the video below (skip to the 1:02 mark!), start in the center of the dough and gently press outward. This will shape your pizza the most without having to do any pulling, which can misshape the dough.
Roll as you go
As you can see in the video above, you need to constantly rotate the dough as you roll it out. This helps to keep the shape uniform; spend too much time on a section without rolling and you'll end up with a long, misshapen hem. Plus, the dough is more likely to stick if you don't keep it moving, which can also ruin your rolls.
Gravity is your friend
Let gravity do most of the work for you when shaping. It is soft enough that it will slowly stretch the dough while still maintaining its original round shape without pulling too much on one side of the dough.
After using the “push, don't pull” method to stretch the dough into a medium circle, lift the dough onto the backs of your hands and use your knuckles to gently move the dough into a circle, allowing for gravity. to stretch the edges of the dough circle further. Conversely, pulling the dough by hand will stretch the center more than the edges, introducing the possibility of tearing a hole in the dough or creating an uneven round.
Provide stick-free loading
Once you've formed your pizza dough into a perfect round, you need to nail down one last step: getting it into the oven without collapsing in on itself or ruining the nice circle shape. That last hurdle is where things can often go wrong: if your pizza dough sticks to the skin, it can lose its shape and turn into an oval (or worse). (See ours Stress-free tips for putting pizza in the oven for a complete guide.)
Make sure this doesn't happen by properly preparing your peel. Build your pizza in a circle Parchment paper or spray your own pizza peel with an even layer of oatmeal. Both approaches will help the dough slide off the shell and into the oven effortlessly. (And if you don't have a peeler, you can use the back of a baking sheet or cookie sheet.)
Finally, deposit the pizza in your baking stone OR steel correctly. Physically place the point of the peel at an angle down to where you want the pizza to land on the baking surface. Allow the pie to gradually slide down and away from the shell as you move constantly, slowly pulling the shell out of the oven and depositing the pie in the process.
More pizza instructions:
Cover photo by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
