Making homemade pizza dough tastes delicious when prepared and stretched correctly, and with a few tips & tricks on how to roll out pizza dough with a rolling pin, any home cook will be able to do it with ease.
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🍕 Rolling Out Pizza Dough
It's incredible the number of tasty things you can make when mixing a bit of flour, water, and yeast together. Those 3 magical ingredients are the starting block for various loaves of bread, cakes, and pizza doughs.
All of that goodness comes with many preparation methods to make the dough turn into a soft, delicious masterpiece, and today we are talking about how to roll it out homemade pizza dough.
There are alternative ways for stretching pizza dough that require specific hand techniques. However, rolling it out is much easier and gives similar results.
🔪 The process of rolling out
Once you have made your pizza dough and shaped it into balls, you are ready to begin rolling.
The best place to stretch the dough is on the kitchen counter. However, if you don't have enough space, you can always use your kitchen table.
With that in mind, here’s the step-by-step guide on how to roll out pizza dough.
Warm the dough
The first step on rolling out pizza dough starts with letting the dough sit at room temperature for around 30 minutes to relax the gluten. Warming cold dough makes it easier to roll out or hand stretch pizza dough because of the protein in gluten that makes pizza dough chewy and stretchy.
Additionally, if you have proofed pizza dough at room temperature for an hour or two, and turned it into a dough ball, you can skip this step.
An excellent way to check if the dough ball is warm and ready for rolling is by pressing the ball with your finger. If the dough springs back, it is soft enough for rolling out.
Clean the surface
Like any form of cooking, cleaning your surfaces before starting the preparation process is essential, especially when rolling or stretching the dough.
A thorough clean of the surface you intend to roll the dough onto must be free of debris because the dough is sticky and will easily collect any bits lying around, which will eventually end up as part of your pizza crust.
There's nothing worse than biting into a great pizza crust with hairs and crunchy debris from leftover food.
Grease the surface with olive oil
Once the dough ball has warmed up, it might be a bit sticky, and one way to prevent it from sticking to your work surface while rolling it out is by drizzling a tablespoon or so of olive oil over the surface. Some methods require lightly dusting the ball in flour, but it can make the pizza dough tough to stretch.
Using olive oil will also help it stretch easier while rolling it, and the crust becomes crispier during the cooking process.
Alternatively, roll the dough on a pizza peel lined with parchment paper.
Press your pizza dough
Press down in the center of the ball with the palm of your hand to let the air out, and let it rest for 5 minutes before rolling it out.
Rolling out pizza dough
Grab your rolling pin and start rolling the dough outwards while evenly distributing your hand weight across it to create a perfectly round shape.
Keep rolling backward and forwards until the flat disc becomes oblong-shaped, then rotate it around and repeat rolling it out. You will need to flip it and roll it a few times to make the dough stretch to your desired shape.
If you want a thicker crust rather than an even crust, roll the dough out until the edge is thicker than the center by half an inch.
Transferring the dough
Now that the dough is stretched into your desired shape, you need to transfer it to a baking sheet, pizza stone, or sheet pan.
Using the rolling pin, fold one end of the dough over it, then gently lift the rolling pin so that the dough hangs in the air and move it over your baking sheet, pizza stone, or sheet pan.
If you end up with any dough tears from lifting the pizza dough, do not worry, as they can easily be fixed by pinching the dough together, and with the sauce and toppings covering the dough, you will not notice any imperfections from the crust when it's baked.
Making pizza dough takes a few attempts to perfect, so do not stress if the dough isn't perfectly rounded the first time around.
To practice your rolling out dough technique, check out my how to make pizza dough with no yeast.
📖 Related Helpful Articles
Are looking for more dough inspiration recipes? Check out my phyllo dough recipes collection with the easiest recipes to make for your family.
🙋 Frequently Asked Questions
How do you roll pizza dough without a roller?
If you don't have a rolling pin to the dough, you can use an empty wine bottle, an empty glass bottle of olive, or something similar.
How do you fix pizza dough that won't stretch?
Pizza dough needs to rest at room temperature before stretching the dough for the gluten to relax. If you find that your dough doesn't stretch when rolling it out, leave it longer in a warm place until it has warmed up.
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