You have carefully prepared and assembled your own delicious homemade pizza. It was a good idea to heat your pizza stone at the same time as your oven.
Now that your pizza has been cooking for a while, you’re ready to take it off the stone. As you attempt to slide your pizza off, you notice that it is stuck to the stone! What do you do? When a pizza gets stuck onto a stone, it can be a very stressful experience! This article will explain how you can prevent and fix sticky dough on your pizza stone.
Dough Sticks Sometimes
No matter what type of dough you use, whether it is for pizza or bread, it tends to be fairly sticky. Whenever you stretch out dough, it’s often necessary to flour your surface and the dough itself. Rolling pins should also be floured if you use them to stretch your dough. Dough sticks to everything.
This stickiness is important because it helps keep the dough together while cooking, but it can also become problematic if it sticks to the surface on which you are cooking your pizza. When it comes to making gourmet homemade pizza, there is no better tool than a pizza stone. Whether you use a pizza stone, a pan, or a steel, you’ve probably encountered difficulties when trying to remove your pizza once it’s finished cooking.
Raw dough that is placed directly on a cooking surface and then cooked adheres easily to the surface. This can be quite frustrating, as you’ll need to physically pry the pizza off, leaving bits behind.
Dough and Pizza Stones
In particular, pizza stones are tricky when it comes to sticky dough. The main reason for this is how a pizza stone is used. In order to use a pizza stone properly, you need to preheat it at the same time as your oven. Because the stone needs to match the temperature of your oven, it cannot withstand drastic temperature changes.
In order to solve this issue, you simply need to put the pizza stone in the oven before you turn it on.
Therefore, you will not be able to place your pizza on the stone outside the oven. To use the stone, you must transfer the pizza while it is inside the oven. You’ll have a difficult time transferring the pizza if it’s stuck to whatever you assembled it on.
Often, the real problem occurs after the pizza is cooked. When it is done cooking, it will still be on the pizza stone.
Unlike a traditional baking sheet or pan, you cannot remove the pizza stone from the oven immediately. You must remove the pizza from the stone while it is still in the oven. Your pizza won’t come off the stone if your dough is too sticky before cooking.
When the pizza has already been cooked, you have fewer options so the best way to deal with sticky dough is to prevent it from happening. When you’re waiting for a delicious pizza, but it’s stuck, that’s not helpful. Here are the two scenarios we’ll cover!
How to Prevent Sticky Dough
There’s no doubt that the best way to handle any problem is to prevent it from happening in the first place. When it comes to pizza dough, this is absolutely doable, but it requires some care when preparing it.
When you start building the pizza, your dough shouldn’t feel sticky. You’ll need to add flour and cornmeal if it is. Make sure you apply flour and cornmeal to whatever surface you work the dough on as well as whatever you use to transfer the pizza.
To do this, you need a pizza peel, which is essentially a long, flat spatula that can be used to peel your pizza off a stone. It should be no problem to transfer your raw pizza onto your pizza stone if you have a good amount of flour and cornmeal on your pizza peel and work surface.
To prevent your pizza from sticking to the peel, you may also consider using parchment paper. Cornmeal and flour can be applied directly to this, and you can also use it directly on your pizza stone!
You can also check your pizza halfway through cooking. The time it takes to cook a pizza on a pizza stone may be short, but ensuring that it easily slides off part-way through is a great way to ensure it stays that way. Also, you can rotate the pizza so that the dough does not stick in the last half of cooking.
Taking Care of Sticky Dough
Once you’ve assembled and started cooking your pizza, it may be too late to prevent it from sticking to the stone. Fortunately, this can be resolved with a little effort.
The first thing you should do if your pizza is stuck to your pizza stone is to turn off the oven. If you are able to remove your pizza stone from the oven, do so, otherwise you will need to wait for it to cool. Push the pizza off the peel with a pizza peel or a spatula. If it doesn’t come up, you may need to physically scrape it off. If your pizza is ultimately unsalvageable, you should wait until the stone is completely cooled before handling it.
You should avoid soaking the stone, but instead scrape off any pizza bits that are still stuck to it. Whenever a pizza goes to waste, it is a sad day, but let it be a lesson for next time!
A Great Stone for Preventing Sticky Dough
It takes some finesse to make great homemade pizza, but with practice you can master it. If your dough keeps sticking to your pizza peel or pizza stone, you’ll want to address this before you cook your pizza!
Flour and cornmeal are your best friends when it comes to preventing dough from sticking. You can use these to create a barrier between the pizza stone and your crust, so it won’t stick. You can always cheat and use parchment paper if you’re having trouble.
As soon as you figure out how to fix sticky dough, you’ll want to make sure you’re using the best pizza stone available. The Cast Elegance pizza stone is strong enough to withstand extreme temperature changes and dozens of cooks. Once you experience the difference in crust quality and texture, you’ll never cook pizza without a Cast Elegance stone again! Furthermore, we have compiled a guide that can assist you in choosing the best pizza stones for oven.
Hi there! I’m a food enthusiast and journalist, and I have a real passion for food that goes beyond the kitchen. I love my dream job and I’m lucky enough to be able to share my knowledge with readers of several large media outlets. My specialty is writing engaging food-related content, and I take pride in being able to connect with my audience. I’m known for my creativity in the kitchen, and I’m confident that I can be the perfect guide for anyone looking to take their culinary journey to the next level.
