(And 5 Ways to Fix It)
Nothing is so frustrating as ruining your pizza in the oven. Let’s look at 7 reasons your pizza dough is too sticky and exactly how to fix it!
Making your own pizza dough is an incredibly rewarding experience…except when it isn’t! And dough that’s too sticky to work with can be one of those occasions. But like all riddles, it can be solved!
So, Why Is My Pizza Dough So Sticky!
There are times you’ll wonder “why is my pizza dough so sticky?”. It really can make working with it difficult and frustrating. So let’s take a look at 7 reasons why this happens and how it can be fixed!
Pizza dough is affected by a number of factors – and they aren’t just limited to the list of ingredients. Even things like the humidity of the air, the temperature, resting time, and how you’re kneading the dough play a factor.
But let’s first look at that ingredient list…
The Effects of Ingredients (and Recipe) on Sticky Pizza Dough
Number 1: Too Much Water?
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the first reason pizza dough is sticky is because of the amount of water. The more water added, the more sticky the dough.
But, some pizza dough recipes do this on purpose.
Wait, Is Your Pizza Dough Too Sticky? Or is that on purpose?
High Hydration Pizza Dough
There are actually pizza dough recipes that purposefully use as high as 100% hydration – meaning that for every 1 ounce of flour (by weight), there’s 1 ounce of water (again by weight). The reason to increase the hydration is that the dough will get more stretchy and extensible. It also gets softer.
And, one of the biggest reasons for high-hydration dough is because it will make the dough rise more and more quickly (the water gives the yeast a helping hand).
Our AVPN Neapolitan Dough recipe is supposed to have hydration of about 60%. This is because the cooking time is very short and there’s not much time for the water to evaporate – despite the fast cooking time.
For comparison, Roman Pizza is generally higher hydration – often about 75%. Since the dough is proofing for 72 hours and then cooked in a pan, it makes more sense to use a higher hydration.
So if you are making a high hydration dough, you’re simply working with dough that’s supposed to be sticky. Sorry!
What is the Ideal Hydration for Non-Sticky Dough?
Okay so if your pizza is not supposed to be high hydration, your dough is probably be in the 60% to 65% hydration range (by weight).
Number 2: Your Flour Makes a Huge Difference
Different flours have different densities and therefore weight. And you can crush down or fluff up your flour in your measuring cup, which will have an effect on the weight as well. Since the hydration is a ratio between the weight of the flour vs. the water, both of these things play a part.
- 1 cup of water = 237 grams
- 1 cup of bread flour = 120 to 157 grams
- 1 cup of AP flour = 120 to 145 grams
- 1 cup of 00 flour = 116 to 127 grams
- 1 cup of white whole wheat flour = 113 to 120 grams
So, using the same amount of bread flour is going to give a lower hydration pizza than 00 flour. Because our Easy Peasy Pizza Dough uses bread flour, it has a lower hydration (60%) and is easier to work with than if the same recipe used 00 flour (75% to 80%!).
Your Flour’s Protein and Gluten Content
Not only do different flours have differing densities, they also have different protein (and therefore gluten content). Bread flour is typically very high gluten content. Whole wheat flour is not – and yet it’s dryer. Type 00 made from American wheat is stronger than type 00 made from Italian wheat (like Caputo, Polselli, or Le 5 Stagioni
So pay close attention to what your recipe calls for!
Other Factors that Will Affect How Sticky Your Dough Is
Number 3: Humidity
In a high humidity environment, your dough and flour will absorb moisture from the air. It’s probably not practical to try to control the humidity in your house versus simply being ready to add more or less flour in the last moments of dough mixing to correct for this.
Number 4: Altitude
Altitude generally increases the dryness of flour and therefore should make your pizza less sticky. You’re not going to be able to fix this, so you should just take it into account. For example a Colorado Mountain pizza pie recipe is probably designed for higher altitudes – and it might be a bit stickier when made at sea level!
Number 5: Kneading Time
An important factor in developing your dough is kneading the ingredients together. Whether using a mixer or doing this by hand, you need to ensure all of the ingredients are fully mixed together. The kneading process also gets the process of gluten forming. Gluten is essential to a good pizza – especially a thin crust pizza, like Neapolitan.
So kneading/mixing is important to the dough but also begins to reduce stickiness. Using a stand mixer, you should mix for about 5-7 minutes, depending on how quickly you combine the ingredients.
If mixing by hand, it could take as much as 15-20 minutes, again depending on how quickly you combine the ingredients, but also how big your recipe (dough) is.
Over-kneading won’t fix dough that’s too sticky to work with, but you should be aware that the dough will become somewhat less sticky as you knead it.
Number 6: Resting (Proofing) The Dough
Just like kneading, resting your dough allows the continued development of gluten. Many recipes recommend resting the dough with a damp towel over top. Although this is wise for most situations, if your dough is already sticky, this will likely make it more so. Instead, you may wish to simply cover the dough or put it in a container.
Overproofing
This essentially means you let the dough ferment too long (or at too high of a temperature) and the flour has broken down too much – this usually results in the dough becoming too sticky.
This is easy to do!
Pay careful attention to the recipe here – more yeast or starter and warmer temperatures will accelerate the fermenting.
Number 7: Waiting Too Long
If you’ve formed your dough and you take too long to top it, there’s a very good chance it will stick to your work area (or your peel).
This is for sure the hardest problem to fix.
We have a whole article on How to Launch a Pizza Without Sticking, which is going to be a huge help if you’re in this situation!
5 Ways to Fix Sticky Pizza Dough
1. More Flour While Kneading/Mixing
If you can clearly see that your dough is too sticky during the mixing process, you can add additional flour. Note that this begins to change your hydration level and the changes can happen quickly, so you shouldn’t do this until you’re sure the dough is well mixed but still sticking to everything.
If using a stand mixer, dust your hands with flour, pull the hook out of the dough, and dust the dough with a tablespoon of flour and restart. You’re waiting for the ball to pull almost all of the dough from the sides of the mixing bowl into the dough ball.
If kneading by hand, again dust your hands with flour and the top of the dough. You can also use a dough scraper, especially if you’re trying to keep the dough at high hydration levels.
2. Olive Oil Your Dough
Although olive oil isn’t an ingredient of a Neapolitan dough, it’s commonly used in many others. So an option is to oil your hands and rub them over the dough ball after mixing. This will reduce the stickiness of the dough and make it easier to work with.
You can add the oil right before resting (proofing) the dough and/or right after and before you start to work it into shape. If your recipe makes multiple dough balls, the ideal time might be when you are separating it into the dough balls.
If needed, you can also oil your work space while forming the dough, although flouring may work better.
3. Flour Your Work Space
If it’s time to form your pizza but it’s sticky now, in many situations, that’s okay. Again, your dough recipe may be for a high hydration pizza. In these recipes, your dough has now proofed and is ready with high hydration inside – but you still to need to get it formed.
Dusting your work space with flour (and semolina flour is pretty much always the best flour for this, due to its coarse grain and very high heat resistance), allows you to work the pizza’s exterior without adding flour to the middle. This means you should not fold the flour into the pizza.
Although a rolling pin can be used, I strongly recommend at least starting by hand stretching your dough. Using your hands to gently stretch the dough into shape first allows you to better judge how much flour your work space and your dough needs to keep from sticking but not using too much.
4. Flour (and Cornmeal) for Your Pizza Peel
If you are using a pizza peel to launch your pizza, you’ll want to fairly liberally flour the surface of your pizza peel before you put the dough on. Again, semolina flour is generally your best choice. You can also add some cornmeal, as it’s even more coarse. However cornmeal does burn more easily at high temperatures (like an outdoor pizza oven) and does come with its own flavor.
Perhaps even more important:
Do not put your dough onto the peel until you have all of your ingredients ready and your oven up to temperature!
You want the pizza on the peel for the shortest time possible. Some chefs will make the entire pizza first and then slide the peel under the pizza after before launching. This takes practice in not deforming your pizza, but it works.
5. Oil Your Pan
If your recipe uses a pizza pan, you can oil your pan (sometimes rather liberally) and transfer your high-hydration pizza dough to it – even if it’s somewhat sticky (more sticky = more oil). You can finish forming the pizza on the pan.
Todd’s cooking skills have revolved around the grill since about age 12, when he developed a love for grilling and took over for Mom at the BBQ. He worked at Wendy’s and at Earl’s Tin Palace (a restaurant chain in Canada) but never really did any sort of baking…until he and Heather started making pizza together! Now he’s often making dough in the mornings and pizza in the evenings.