Why Is My Pizza Dough Hard? - Spizza

The Most Common Pizza Mistakes! – With millions of pizzas being made around the world, it is no wonder that people make some common mistakes! Although pizza seems like a straightforward food to make, there are many elements to baking your own pie that can make the process tricky and affect your final product.

Below are the most common questions we get about making pizza and the steps you need to take to fix them.1. My dough won’t stretch! One of the most common pizza problems has to do with dough prep. Whether you make your own dough or buy it at the store – it has to proof (or rest) for a bit. Many people want to start working with their pizza dough right away and attempt to stretch and form their dough before it is fully proofed,

This will cause the dough to shrink and resist being stretched into a nice crust. If this is the case you need to let your dough proof at room temperature for at least 30 mins or longer before stretching. 2. My dough is too hard! Sometimes when too much flour is added, dough will come out hard and stiff. This can be caused by overworking the dough either by hand or with a roller. Overworking dough will pop all the tiny bubbles that make pizza crust so airy and fluffy once cooked. 3. My pizza is soggy Probably the most common mistake of new pizza makers is soggy pizza dough. This due to overloading the pizza with toppings – including sauce and cheese! While it’s easy to get excited and think the more toppings the better! This excitement will quickly cause a lot of problems. 4. That’s the wrong sauce Many people will go the extra mile to make their own pizza dough from scratch, only to put a premade sauce right on top of it. This is a huge mistake as the strongest flavors coming from your pizza are the dough and sauce! Making your own sauce will give you far more control over what kind of pizza you are trying to make, for a great homemade sauce recipe you can check out: How to make your own pizza sauce. 5. Don’t put it in a pan! This is a very common mistake mostly because people do not have the right equipment to make a pizza at home. Everyone wants the brick oven taste but then cooks a pizza on a pan for 25-min in a conventional oven! The issue here is that baking pans or cookie sheets are too thin to conduct high heat to the dough, this makes for a slowly baked pizza that results in a hard crust and soupy toppings. Pizza can be complicated! Yet, the complexity is probably what makes it one of the most fun foods to make. Every day I see great pictures of families all over the world getting together to make amazing pizzas! You don’t see that as much with a pasta dish or taco night.
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Contents

1 Why is my pizza dough so tough?
2 Should pizza dough be wet or dry before baking?
- 2.1 How to soften hard pizza dough?
- 2.2 Can you stretch out pizza dough?
3 Why is my pizza dough not stretchy?
4 How do you make pizza dough too tough?
5 What happens if you overproof pizza dough?
- - 5.0.1 Is pizza dough supposed to be hard or soft?

Why is my pizza dough so tough?

Why is my pizza dough tough? – If your pizza dough is too tough, it will be because there is too much flour in the mix in comparison to the water. A lot of people get perplexed by the sticky texture that the dough initially has and add flour to get rid of this quickly.

However, the sticky texture is important because it allows the gluten to form in the dough and allows the dough to smooth out and gain that springy texture before leaving it to prove. If your pizza dough is too tough when you leave it to prove, it won’t have the same rise as you would want it too as the gluten won’t expand as it should.

Another reason why your pizza dough is tough could be the type of flour used when making the dough. When making pizza dough, you should be using a softer flour such as “00” flour as strong protein flour will overwhelm any gluten develop in the dough thus meaning that the dough will be extremely chewy once it is cooked and may even be inedible if using a lot of strong flour.
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Should pizza dough be wet or dry before baking?

A Higher Hydration Level Will Soften Your Pizza Dough – Hydration is one of the key factors that will make a bland pizza crust amazing. Readers of this blog will know that I advocate for using a very wet pizza dough because I love the fluffy crust it bakes into.

But a higher hydration level will not only make your pizza crust softer, it will make the pizza dough much softer and more pliable as well. So if you’re finding your pizza dough is too hard or tough to stretch, it’s very likely a hydration issue. A high level of hydration will soften hard pizza dough and allow it to stretch more easily and puff up nicely when baked.

I recommend a hydration level of 65-75% for optimal softness and baking in a home oven. But this doesn’t simply mean to wet your pizza dough before you shape it. Brushing some water on a pizza dough can be helpful if you’ve allowed it to crust over in the open air, but this will not make the dough softer or easier to work with if it’s too dry.

To properly hydrate your pizza dough, you need to increase the water level in your ingredients when you mix the dough in the first place. My own personal pizza dough recipe uses a 68% hydration level. This gives me a pizza that bakes into a fluffy crust as well as a dough that is soft without being too wet.

This is the best of both worlds. To best understand hydration levels in pizza dough, think of it in terms of the percentage of water vs the total amount of flour. So to use my pizza recipe’s example, you would use 680ml of water for every 1000g of flour. An extremely wet pizza dough mixture like this one will stretch easily when it’s been full kneaded.
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How to soften hard pizza dough?

But a higher hydration level will not only make your pizza crust softer, it will make the pizza dough much softer and more pliable as well. So if you’re finding your pizza dough is too hard or tough to stretch, it’s very likely a hydration issue. A high level of hydration will soften hard pizza dough and allow it to stretch more easily and puff up nicely when baked.

To properly hydrate your pizza dough, you need to increase the water level in your ingredients when you mix the dough in the first place. My own personal pizza dough recipe uses a 68% hydration level. This gives me a pizza that bakes into a fluffy crust as well as a dough that is soft without being too wet.

Can you stretch out pizza dough?

Why Is My Pizza Dough So Hard To Stretch? Here’s What To Do Trying to stretch out your pizza dough can be a huge pain if you’re not treating it right. If it quickly pulls itself back in after being stretched out and tears easily, you’re going to struggle to get the pizza base you want.

Although this might be annoying, it’s actually not uncommon. A lot of people struggle to shape their pizza dough properly, so there’s nothing to worry about. When your pizza dough is like this, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve made bad dough, you might just not be handling it properly so the gluten is tightening up.

Tight gluten is the most common cause of dough that’s difficult to stretch. When gluten is tight, it’s very elastic so it springs back easily. Get your dough to room temperature before you work with it and let it relax for 15 minutes if it feels too tight.

Relaxed gluten is easier to stretch. Any good pizza dough needs to be easy to stretch. If it’s too stiff and hard, you’re going to struggle to get it to a good size and thickness and it won’t cook well. If you’re interested in expanding your baking equipment collection and becoming a better pizza-maker, feel free to check out,

Once you start to use these, you’ll start to have a much easier time making any kind of bread.

The main component of great pizza is the crust, so it’s important that you nail it.
Making a good pizza is down to the recipe, ingredients, and the way you handle the dough, so here are some notable tips for handling your dough with ease.
1. Let It Relax

Never try and stretch your pizza dough out if you have just been working with it. Shaping it into a ball or kneading it will cause the gluten to tighten up and the dough will become more difficult to stretch, so you need to have patience. You’ve probably noticed that dough becomes significantly more stiff when you knead it.

If you’re struggling to form your dough, simply leave it to rest for 15 minutes or so and come back to it.
After the rest period, you’ll notice that the dough feels much softer, lighter, and easier to stretch.
2. Bring It To Room Temperature
If you have been proofing your dough in the fridge, you don’t want to take it out and start working with it right away as it will be too difficult.
You see, the gluten tightens up in cold dough and is therefore more difficult to stretch and shape, so you’ll have a hard time getting it to the size you want.
The best thing you can do is take your dough out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature for around an hour or until there’s no longer a chill to it.
Once the dough gets warmer, the gluten will become more relaxed and you should be able to easily stretch it to your desired size.
3. Use The Right Flour
Okay, so there’s not technically a ‘right’ flour to use for all types of pizzas, but the three most common are bread flour, all-purpose flour, and 00 flour.
The classic flour to use would be type 00 flour as it used to make traditional Neapolitan pizza, but you can still get away with using the other two.

People get great results with both all-purpose and bread flour, but the textures can come out differently. All-purpose flour gives the pizza a softer crust whilst bread flour gives a chewier but crispier crust. The main thing to consider when making pizza dough is gluten development.

4. Find The Right Stretching Method
You might be having difficulty stretching your dough because of the technique you’re using. Some people find certain stretching methods easier than others, so you should find the methods that work best for you
When I first started making pizza dough, I found the easiest way to stretch it out was by using ‘The DJ Method’, but everyone has their own preference.

Since stretching dough can be so awkward, it’s very important to figure out what you like the most. Once you get good at the first method, you can try out other ways and become more experienced with handling your dough. Take a look at this video so you can get a better understanding of how to stretch it out.

5. Get The Hydration Level Right
Getting the water content of your dough right doesn’t have to be difficult, but small mistakes can mess it up.
You need to get your dough to a point where it contains enough moisture to be very workable but not too much so it’s difficult to handle.

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Having the hydration level too low will leave you with a dry dough that won’t be sticky and won’t stretch as much as you want it to. Additionally, it likely won’t give you the crust you’re aiming for. Having the hydration level too high and you will likely have a mess on your hands.

Dough that’s wet is often very sticky and difficult to handle.
You’ll have to use a lot of extra flour when shaping it and be careful not to tear it.
Make sure that you use the right amount of flour and water by measuring your ingredients by weight.
Avoid using volume to measure ingredients as this can throw off the ratios of your dough.

To be sure that you’re not adding too much flour and drying out your dough, you should stay away from adding more flour when you’re kneading it. The dough will be sticky when you start kneading it but it’ll soon start to stick less. You always want a little stickiness in your dough, so only add extra flour if you need to.6.

Don’t Use A Rolling Pin One thing to absolutely never do is use a rolling pin on your pizza dough.
It ruins the dough by pushing out any trapped gas and compressing its texture.
You might find it difficult to stretch your dough by hand, but rolling it out won’t improve it.
It’s actually going to make the dough worse.

Yes, it will ‘stretch’ the gluten, but not in the way it’s meant to be stretched. Your hands are always your best tools for shaping and stretchy pizza dough, so don’t try and cheat by using a rolling pin. Just persevere and your pizzas will come out significantly better.
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Why is my pizza dough not stretchy?

Pizza dough won’t stretch – There are many reasons why a pizza dough won’t stretch. But in my experience, the 2 most common causes are an underproved dough and an overproved dough, As dough ferments (proves) it becomes softer and stretchier. An underproved dough will generally be quite difficult to stretch. A well proved dough should be quite easy to stretch out If your dough hasn’t expanded and there aren’t any bubbles in it then it is probably underproved. However, a dough that is overproved can also cause the same problem. Once a dough has expanded to it’s peak, it starts contracting back.
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How do you make pizza dough too tough?

What Causes Dough to Become Tough? – When cooking most pizzas, you will want the dough to be pliable and easy to work with. Depending on the type of crust and base you are looking for, you will want your dough to be easy to work with, and you will want to make sure you are not overworking the pizza dough.

Here are a few things to consider if you believe your pizza dough has become too tough. First things first, the dough for your pizza can quickly become too tough to work with if you are using too much flour or the wrong kind of flour., especially wheat flour substitutes, can be much grainier than your standard baking flour.

In fact, this is such an important part of the dough’s baking process that there are actually some types of flour that pizza makers prefer because it is finer than the standard baking flour. If you used flour that is too coarse or if you used too much flour in your dough, you can end up with stiff, hard to work with dough.

Once you already put the flour into the dough, you usually cannot take it out, so be mindful of the type of flour you are using.
Additionally, you can make your dough too tough by overworking it with the rolling pin (or your hands).
Typically, pizza dough is meant to have tiny little air bubbles that, when the dough is placed into the oven, will expand and add volume to the pizza.

When you overwork the dough, you end up popping all of these tiny air bubbles, meaning that nothing will really expand when you put the dough into the oven, leaving you with a pizza that doesn’t taste or feel very good in the mouth. Now that you understand what can go wrong in the pizza-making process, you can begin to learn how to remedy the pizza and try to work with the dough to turn it back into the pliable dough that everyone wants for their pizzas.
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What happens if you overproof pizza dough?

Why is my pizza dough too soft? – If your pizza dough is too soft it can be difficult to stretch out. In general pizza dough should be made as soft as possible. However, it is possible to have a pizza dough that is too soft. In my experience this is most often caused by slightly overproved dough. If your dough is overproofed it will lose it’s strength and it will be very difficult to stretch Even if you manage to stretch the pizza out nicely, the pizza will often turn out a bit doughy. In general, this isn’t a big problem and chances are you’ll still end up with a delicious pizza,
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Is pizza dough supposed to be hard or soft?

Although this might be annoying, it’s actually not uncommon. A lot of people struggle to shape their pizza dough properly, so there’s nothing to worry about. When your pizza dough is like this, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve made bad dough, you might just not be handling it properly so the gluten is tightening up.

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Once you start to use these, you’ll start to have a much easier time making any kind of bread.

The main component of great pizza is the crust, so it’s important that you nail it.
Making a good pizza is down to the recipe, ingredients, and the way you handle the dough, so here are some notable tips for handling your dough with ease.
1. Let It Relax

If you’re struggling to form your dough, simply leave it to rest for 15 minutes or so and come back to it.
After the rest period, you’ll notice that the dough feels much softer, lighter, and easier to stretch.
2. Bring It To Room Temperature
If you have been proofing your dough in the fridge, you don’t want to take it out and start working with it right away as it will be too difficult.
You see, the gluten tightens up in cold dough and is therefore more difficult to stretch and shape, so you’ll have a hard time getting it to the size you want.
The best thing you can do is take your dough out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature for around an hour or until there’s no longer a chill to it.
Once the dough gets warmer, the gluten will become more relaxed and you should be able to easily stretch it to your desired size.
3. Use The Right Flour
Okay, so there’s not technically a ‘right’ flour to use for all types of pizzas, but the three most common are bread flour, all-purpose flour, and 00 flour.
The classic flour to use would be type 00 flour as it used to make traditional Neapolitan pizza, but you can still get away with using the other two.

4. Find The Right Stretching Method
You might be having difficulty stretching your dough because of the technique you’re using. Some people find certain stretching methods easier than others, so you should find the methods that work best for you
When I first started making pizza dough, I found the easiest way to stretch it out was by using ‘The DJ Method’, but everyone has their own preference.

5. Get The Hydration Level Right
Getting the water content of your dough right doesn’t have to be difficult, but small mistakes can mess it up.
You need to get your dough to a point where it contains enough moisture to be very workable but not too much so it’s difficult to handle.

Dough that’s wet is often very sticky and difficult to handle.
You’ll have to use a lot of extra flour when shaping it and be careful not to tear it.
Make sure that you use the right amount of flour and water by measuring your ingredients by weight.
Avoid using volume to measure ingredients as this can throw off the ratios of your dough.

Don’t Use A Rolling Pin One thing to absolutely never do is use a rolling pin on your pizza dough. It ruins the dough by pushing out any trapped gas and compressing its texture. You might find it difficult to stretch your dough by hand, but rolling it out won’t improve it. It’s actually going to make the dough worse.

Nino Marić