Tips & Articles

Pizza Perfection: Tossing a Pizza by Hand

Hand-tossing a pizza is more than just showing off—it helps to get the perfect crust for your favorite pie. While it may seem intimidating for beginners, it’s not impossible. Here are some tips to help you avoid pizza dough on your ceiling.

There are many ways to form pizza dough into a perfect circle for baking a pizza. Various gadgets, machines, hot presses, cold presses, and hand-tossing can work well depending on your pizza-making needs. Out of all the different methods, hand-tossing a pizza is considered the gentlest way of forming the dough without damaging it.

While some pizza-slingers may argue over the “best” way to toss a pizza, here are some basic guidelines that will help you on your journey to become great at hand-tossing a pizza.

Benefits of Hand-tossing

While some may think that hand-tossing is a great way to entertain and show off some impressive skills, hand-tossing a pizza actually has some great benefits: it’s an effective way of getting rid of lumps in your dough, it helps to get your pizza shaped in a smooth, thin, even circle, and it helps shape your dough without the loss of moisture (as opposed to some mechanical methods of shaping the dough).

Ditch the Bling

Before handling any kind of dough, you want to make sure you remove all jewelry and accessories from your hands and wrists. Not only can these accessories tear the dough, they can be a pain to clean.

Kneading Is Important

Before you even start tossing your dough around, you must make sure it has been kneaded thoroughly, and you have given the dough enough time to rise. Kneading helps to get air into the dough and gives you dough that is easier to handle with a lot of elasticity. If you find your dough to be too hard to handle, knead it some more.

Flour Is Your Friend

When working with any type of dough, flour is essential to make it easy to handle. Who wants to try and toss a sticky, gummy mess? When it comes to handling dough, don’t be shy with the flour (you can always shake it off the dough). Make sure your work area has enough flour so that it is easy to move the dough around. When it comes to hand-tossing a pizza, you may also want to put some flour on your hands and even your arms!

Dock the Dough

“Docking” is the term used to describe poking holes in the dough (with a tool, fork, or fingers) to release large pockets of trapped air. Docking pizza dough helps to avoid large bubbles in the final product. The majority of pizza makers think that docking is an important task; however, some feel that it can damage the dough. Also, some people just like bubbles. Let your own preference be your guide.

Right for Righties / Left for Lefties

When you are ready to toss a pizza, toss it with your dominant hand. This will allow for more control when you toss the pizza. When you toss, make sure your dominant hand is palm-side up with your fingers close together (tossing with your fingers spread apart may lead to tearing the dough). To toss the dough, your tossing hand should be given enough room so that you can comfortably perform an upwards corkscrew motion to get the dough into the air.

Fists Are Gentle!

When your pizza returns from its airborne trip, be sure to catch the dough with the back of your fists. This provides the gentlest way to handle the dough as it stretches to the desired length. As the dough gets larger, remember to widen the gap between your fists when you catch.

While it will take some practice, hand-tossing a pizza can give you crust that is to die for. Because of its gentle nature, hand-tossing does not damage the dough as it would be damaged if it was pressed or processed. Every hand-tossed pizza is unique, adding to the joy of hand-tossing a pizza. Forming and shaping a pizza by hand helps to give it that authentic, Italian feel.