If you are ambitious, give a try at tossing your dough. It isn’t really hard and can be fun to try. Tossing pizza dough is not necessary to get a great pizza and is sometimes more for show, but it still is an effective way to get an even distribution of dough across your circle. When you toss pizza dough, you need to remember not to use your fingertips. Instead, you are using your knuckles and fist, as your fingers would poke through the dough, causing holes. By folding your fingertips over, you will keep from doing this.

First, remove your rings and your watch. To toss your dough, you need to start with a disk of dough. Take your rested ball of dough and press it with your fingertips or roll it into a flat disk shape about 1 to 1-1/2 inches thick. It helps if you start out with a circular shape. You can now pick up the dough to begin the tossing process. Bend your fingers over into a loose fist and drape the dough over your hands. As you gently move your hands apart, the dough will begin to stretch.

This is the basic idea behind stretching the dough. You need to now add a rotation to ensure an even thickness and round shape. As you stretch the dough with your hands, move your fists in a counterclockwise direction, readjusting the dough as it moves along your hands. With practice, you will be able to do this maneuver quickly and can give the dough a toss, sending it into the air as you shift it along your hands. This is tossing your dough. Eventually, you will be able to toss it higher and with greater speed. Just remember to keep your fingertips tucked downward, or you’ll punch a hole in your dough. How do you know when to stop? Well, you can stop anytime your dough reaches the diameter and thickness you’d like. Remember that the dough will rise again a bit in the oven.

What if you do get a hole in the dough when you are rolling or tossing it? Well, this is easy to fix. Just pinch the edges of the hole together. You can close any hole this way. Take care not to make your crust too thin, as this will tend to increase the number of holes you’ll see.