How to Keep Pizza Dough From Shrinking Back When Putting It on a Pan

Resting the dough before forming the pizza shape will help it keep its form.

Making homemade pizza gives you the ultimate freedom to customize your crust and toppings. This process can have problems such as the dough springing back out when putting it into the pizza pan. Yeast bread doughs like pizza dough will be very elastic after kneading. Trying to put this still-elastic dough into a pan will result in the pizza dough shrinking away from the edges.

Things You'll Need

• Plastic wrap
• Rolling pin
• Cornmeal

Instructions

1. Cover the risen pizza dough with plastic wrap.

2. Rest the dough for 15 minutes before shaping to reduce elasticity.

3. Remove the plastic wrap and flatten the dough into a 1/2 inch thick round with a rolling pin.

4. Stretch and shape the dough with your hands into a round the same size as your pizza pan. Pull and turn the dough on a floured surface to hand-stretch it.

5. Optionally, mold a 1/2 to 1 inch thick rim all around the edge of the pizza dough for a rim to hold in the toppings and a thicker crust edge.

6. Gently lift the pizza dough from the work surface and transfer it to a cornmeal-dusted pizza pan and bake as directed.

References

• Allrecipes.com: Forming Pizza Crust
• "Good Eats 2: The Middle Years"; Alton Brown; 2010