Over-kneading your dough will create a fine, crumb-like texture, giving your dough a bready texture rather than a light and airy pizza crust.
Fixing the Tough Pizza Dough
Generally, what you will want to do is use a bit of water to try and bring back the hydration ratio. This may not always work, as the flour has already been worked into the dough, but it may be worth trying if you want to salvage your dough recipe.
Your dough will be shaggy and lumpy to begin with, but once you've kneaded it for a while it should be smooth and slightly tacky to touch. If your dough holds it shape and doesn't ooze or sag when you hold it up, that's another good sign that your dough is well kneaded.
Pizza dough that has been left to rise for too long, or has been over-proofed, can potentially collapse. The gluten becomes overly relaxed, and the end product will be gummy or crumbly instead of crisp and fluffy.
Cover your dough with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. After a bit of rest, the gluten in the dough will relax, making the process of stretching much easier.
Bring your dough to room temperature.
Gluten, the protein that makes pizza dough chewy, is tighter in cold conditions like the fridge, which is why cold pizza dough will stretch out and snap back just like a rubber band. This step will loosen up the dough and make it easier to shape.
For best results when using prepared pizza dough, let the dough rest at room temperature in the bag or covered, until it has risen a little, and then try to stretch it out. It's been my experience that the bought dough is usually harder to stretch out than the homemade version.
The longer the yeast has had to feast – ideally 24 to 48 hours – the lighter and more flavorful the pizza dough will be. It will also be easier to digest because the yeast has done the job of breaking down ingredients that your stomach would have otherwise had to handle.
If the dough is under proofed, the indentation springs back really fast and does not stay. If the dough is over proofed, the indentation stays, the surface is sticky, and the structure may collapse.
Step 1: Perform the fingertip test to make sure your dough is overproofed. The test involves gently pressing your finger into the surface of the dough for 2 seconds and then seeing how quickly it springs back. The dent you make will be permanent if the dough is overproofed.
After the dough has rested, turn it out onto a very lightly floured work surface and knead it by hand about 20-30 times. (If your dough has the perfect consistency, you don't even need to flour the surface.)
Though it's important to knead your dough thoroughly, it's not necessary to knead your dough for long. We recommended kneading your dough for about 4 to 6 minutes! Over-kneading your dough will create a fine, crumb-like texture, giving your dough a bready texture rather than a light and airy pizza crust.
While underworked dough can simply be fixed by a little more kneading, severely overworked dough cannot be fixed. Instead, the overworked dough will result in a hard loaf that will likely not be eaten. It's important not to overwork your dough and continually check for overworking throughout the kneading process.
Why is my dough springing back into place when I try to form it into a pizza shape? If your dough is springing back into place when you try to stretch it out, this usually means that the gluten hasn't had enough time to develop. Gluten is what makes dough elastic and stretchy.
If the dough doesn't spring back at all, you've likely over-proofed the dough. When the dough rises too much before it gets baked, it will collapse, rather than rise, in the oven's heat, and the crumb will be uneven and ragged.
Place the ball in a container to prove and cover with cling film. Leave the dough to prove in a warm place for 60-90 minutes or cold prove in the fridge for 1-3 days. When cold proving, take the dough out 2 hours before starting to cook.
Allow the dough to rise, covered, for 45 minutes; then refrigerate it for 4 hours (or up to 36 hours); this step will develop the crust's flavor. It'll continue to rise in the fridge, so make sure it's in a big enough bowl.
You can chill your dough during either the first or second rise. Your yeast won't give you much love if it's asked to do both rises in the fridge, so it's best to do one or the other at room temperature. One of Clara's favorite recipes to make with a cold ferment is Vermont Sourdough.
What you need to make an Italian pizza. Makes dough for 4 pizzas, each one about 12 inches in diameter: 600 mL of warm water. 7 cups (1kg) flour, type “00”*
Cook's Illustrated says to make cold water doughs for bread and pizza recipes because they benefit from long, slow, yeasted rises. The cold water maintains the gluten structure that traps gasses produced by the yeast and adds flavor to the bread.
Marble is preferred because it doesn't hold onto cold temperatures the same way stainless steel does, and there will be none of the reactions that concern some when stainless steel and food come into contact with each other.
In short, it means to intermittently fold the dough over onto itself during the fermentation stage. What this accomplishes is to strengthen the bonding of the gluten protein threads that hold the dough together and thus trap the carbon dioxide created by the yeast.