How To Roll And Toss Pizza Dough Like A Pro

From not letting your dough rest to forgetting to add the salt, there's a multitude of ways to screw up a homemade pizza. How you handle the dough can also impact your finished pie, especially if you love to recreate the pizza shop experience in your kitchen by tossing and rolling. To ensure your homemade pizzas hit all the right notes, Mashed spoke with Nicole Bean, owner and operator of Pizaro's Pizza Napoletana, a family-run pizzeria with two locations in Houston, Texas. In our exclusive chat, Bean offered some essential guidance to help you employ the proper dough-handling technique. 

"There are a billion ways to stretch dough and all depends on what style you are making as well," Bean explains. When it comes to using a rolling pin to flatten dough, the pizza shop owner says that there are limited circumstances when this tool is acceptable. "Things like rolling pins can be used for many doughs," Bean says, "but particularly should only be used for thin crust such as tavern or bar style." Chicago tavern-style pizza gets its name from the fact that its a thin, square-cut pie perfect for sharing while enjoying beers in a drinking establishment. Tavern-style pizza crust has a texture similar to crackers, and using a rolling pin on the dough helps achieve this texture. 

Nicole Bean explains that a rustic approach is best when prepping pizza dough for other pie styles. "Stretching New York style or Napoletana should be done by hand (primarily)," the pizza chef explains, "and should start about a half inch inside of the edge of the crust." New York style pizza is well known for its thin, floppy crust and massive slices that are typically folded for convenience. Better known as Neapolitan pizza in the U.S., pizza Napoletana originated in Naples, Italy, centuries ago and features a soft, stretchy crust. Hand-stretching helps the dough maintain its springiness — provided that you employ the proper technique. 

Bean warns amateur pizza chefs to "Remember you are pushing the gas from the middle of the dough ball out to the edges to create that beautiful crust rim of the pizza." Following her advice to start stretching near the edge of the crust, "You will want to push the dough from this starting point and up through the middle," using a massage technique as opposed to creating dimples in the dough with your fingers. Thicker pan pizza crusts are handled similarly, but dough should be stretched in the pan that the pizza will be cooked. In this case, Bean says to use "oils and lard" to stop the dough from getting stuck in your cookware. 

Watching a person efficiently toss pizza dough is definitely impressive, but the practice is more than just spectacle. Hand tossing is one of several likely reasons why restaurant pizza is so tasty along with factors like high-heat ovens and the use of superior quality ingredients. While hand tossing pizza dough has plenty of proponents, Nicole Bean doesn't believe it is mandatory for an excellent pie. The pizza shop owner explains, "Tossing dough in the air is not overly necessary but can help slack out the dough (meaning stretch it without force)." However, there are some risks involved such as accidentally poking a hole in the dough or allowing it to go airborne, as Bean warns, "not to toss too high as centrifugal force can cause the dough to be oblong." 

If you're compelled to give dough tossing a try, the basic technique is as follows: After forming the dough into a rough approximation of the desired size and shape, form your non-dominant hand into a fist to hold the dough and position your open dominant hand at the edge of the dough. Toss the dough a short distance into the air in a circular motion, spinning it with your open hand. Catch the dough, and repeat until it's stretched to the correct size. Tossing dough, much like pizza making itself, requires practice to master, and with Bean's tips, your homemade pizzas will soon be the stuff of legend.