The Mistake That's Making Your Pizza Crust Tough, And What You Should Do Instead

Making pizza at home can be a challenge, and getting a good quality crust is the biggest one. Some problems have logical fixes — if the middle of the pizza is too wet and doughy, for instance, try less toppings, especially less wet ones. But getting the right chew on the crust is a more scientifically difficult challenge to solve.

To get the answers, Chowhound spoke exclusively with Nicole Bean, who owns and operates two locations of Pizaro's Pizza Napoletana in Houston, Texas, with her family. An expert in the art of the savory pie, Bean explains that home cooks preparing pizza dough often make one common pizza-making mistake that leads to a crust that is too tough. The problem comes down to changing the ingredient balance too much by adding more flour too late in the process. Instead, she proposes a simpler solution that won't negatively impact the texture of your homemade pizza.

According to Nicole Bean, the most common mistake that home cooks make with their pizza dough is "adding too much flour after the dough is already mixed." If you've combined all of the ingredients for your dough and it still seems very wet and sticky, it can be easy to jump immediately to adding more flour to fix the problem. However, this can lead to an overly chewy pizza crust. "If the dough feels too wet, adding extra flour is only going to make the dough tougher," she says.

So, if you find that your pizza dough is too wet and sticky to work with, what should you do instead? One simple solution recommended by Bean is to let time take care of it. "The best way to avoid doing this is allowing your dough to rest longer," she says. Simply letting the dough do its own thing for a bit longer can allow it to dry out enough so that it becomes more workable without having to do any more work at all. If this doesn't do the trick, though, Bean suggests "folding it a few more times." Working the dough like that can help to integrate the ingredients more, but this needs to be done carefully. If you work the dough too much, you risk building up more gluten by kneading it, which will also lead to a tough and chewy crust.

Pizza dough is all about balance. You need to achieve the optimal moisture level so that it's not too wet and not too dry. But you also need to balance the gluten amounts. You want enough gluten that the dough becomes stretchy and elastic so it can be properly formed, but not so much that it becomes hard, chewy, and unpleasant to eat.

Adding more flour can save your pizza dough from being too soggy or wet, but it can also increase the amount of gluten produced in the dough. This can have a similar effect to overworking it. Even if you're not kneading more flour into the dough, using too much flour on the work surface while handling sticky dough can lead to a thick crust that's tough, chewy, and even more likely to burn. It's best to just let the pizza dough rest for longer, or even chill it for a while.

If you're wondering how your pizza dough ended up so wet and sticky in the first place, there's a simple answer. The most obvious culprit is simply too much moisture compared to flour. While following a reliable recipe for pizza dough, even one that involves yogurt, and making sure your measurements are exact should fix this issue, it's worth remembering that your mileage may vary. Just as with other types of dough, for instance, factors like the humidity level where you live can affect the end result and how much flour you need to add at the start. Unfortunately, the only solution to this issue is trial and error.

There are other causes of sticky pizza dough that come down to specific processes and ingredients. Not kneading your dough enough is a classic problem: If you're hand-kneading it, it needs to be worked for as much as 15 to 20 minutes. The type of flour and its protein content can also have an impact on your results; a strong flour that can absorb moisture is typically the best option. And, of course, as Nicole Bean emphasizes, you always need to make sure your pizza dough has plenty of time to rest.