This is one of the most common problems people have making pizzas at home. And there are quite a few reasons why this is happening, but luckily most of them can be solved very easily. So let’s see why your pizza dough isn’t cooking properly.
The most common causes why a pizza dough won’t cook properly are:
- Wet or oily toppings
- Using too many toppings
- Using cold dough
- The thickness of the dough
- Adding the sauce too soon
- Lack of heat from the bottom
- Incorrect temperature
As you can see there are quite a few possible causes why your pizza isn’t cooking properly. So, let’s take a closer look at each one of them in more detail and see how you can solve the problem.
1. Limit the Wet and Oily Toppings
When dealing with an uncooked pizza most people believe that there is something wrong with the dough or with the oven, but most of the time the problem actually comes from the toppings.
The top three most popular pizza toppings are pepperoni, extra cheese, and mushrooms. And all of them are filled with water or grease.
Pepperoni is made with meat that contains a lot of fat, and in most cases, extra fat is added to enhance the taste. Mushrooms are 90% made out of water. In the case of cheese, things can greatly differ from how the cheese was stored, and what type of chase it is, but most of them are full of water as well.
All of the grease and water will be absorbed by the dough while the pizza is in the oven and as a result, it won’t be able to cook properly.
To solve this problem you have a few options. One of them would be to use fewer toppings. But this solution is not exactly ideal, since it will make the pizza less tasty. So, the other option that you have is to place your ingredients on a few paper towels and let the towels absorb some of the grease, oil, and water from them. This won’t affect the taste of the ingredients, and it will help your dough cook completely.
2. Don’t Use Too Many Toppings
Another problem is using too many toppings.
If the entirety of the pizza is covered with toppings, the stream coming from the dough will have nowhere to go, and it will make your pizza wet.
When the dough is cooking, the water inside of it is transformed into steam and escapes the dough. If you block the escape route, the steam will gather in the small space between the toppings and the dough and will stay there, stoping your pizza from properly cooking.
Solving this problem can be very simple, but also a bit complicated, depending on how flexible you are with your toppings.
The simplest thing that you can do is to use fewer toppings, and give your pizza some room to breathe.
But if you don’t want to use fewer toppings there is still something that you can do, you could cook your pizza in two steps. In the first round cook your pizza, but only with the sauce on top of it for a few minutes until it’s almost cooked. Then quickly take the pizza out and add the toppings, then put it back in, and leave it in a few more minutes until the toppings are cooked.
This method will let you use as many toppings as you like, and still have a perfectly cooked pizza.
Now that we have completely covered the toppings, let’s talk about the dough itself.
3. Don’t Use Cold Dough
A very common mistake that people make is using cold dough.
If you place the dough in the oven it will start heating up from the exterior to the interior. If the dough is cold the exterior will cook much faster than the interior. And if you want to completely cook the interior you will have to burn the exterior.
The solution for this problem is quite simple, let your dough rise at room temperature. If your recipe requires you to let the dough rise in the fridge, you should take the dough out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature for about one hour, so that it reaches room temperature.
4. Make Thinner Pizzas
Another common cause for uncooked pizzas is a thick dough.
Everybody likes pizza a certain way, some like it with a very thin crust, and some like it very thick. But some pizzas can be so thick that they can’t cook properly.
On average for a pizza to cock properly, it shouldn’t be thicker than 1 inch. A pizza that is thicker than 1 inch will have a very hard time cooking, and in most cases, it will come out raw in the middle.
Technically speaking you can make a dough that can be bigger than that, like bread for example. But pizza and bread are completely different things, they use different types of dough, and pizza usually has sauce and toppings on it, which makes it harder for it to grow as much.
So, if your pizza is thick, try stretching it more, to make it thinner. If your stretch your pizza as much as you can but it grows bigger in the oven, you might want to adjust your dough recipe or look for a new one.
If you are having a hard time stretching your dough due to tears you should check out my article: 7 Reasons Why Your Pizza Dough Tears When You Stretch It, here I take a look at the 7 most common reasons why a pizza dough tears, and what you can do to fix it.
5. Don’t Add the Sauce Too Early
Another cause why your pizza can come out uncocked out of the oven is that you are adding the sauce too early.
The sauce that you put on top will get absorbed by the dough if you let it sit for too long. So you are basically adding more water to the dough. And all this water will make it harder for the pizza to cook.
You should only put sauce on the dough when all of your toppings are ready to be placed as well.
6. Add More Heat to the Bottom
Now we are going to take a look at heat-related problems, while they are not as common as you might think, they are still one possible reason why your pizza dough is uncooked.
One thing that could keep your pizza dough from cooking properly is the lack of heat from the bottom. In order for a pizza to cook properly, it needs a really hot environment, as well as a very hot surface on which to stay.
The way heat works in a gas home oven is really interesting. The hottest part is at the top, but if you place a metal tray or a pizza stone in the oven, it will heat up faster the closer it is to the bottom, where the source of the heat is. As a result, the middle of the oven is usually used for pizza since it offers a good balance.
But not all ovens are the same, some of them can heat up more than others, and some have a more powerful flame. If your pizza doesn’t get enough heat from the bottom you should try to switch things up and place the pizza closer to the bottom, and see if this will help your pizza cook properly.
Another thing that you could do is to use a pizza stone. Pizza stones are big sheets of stone that are used for cooking pizzas in gas and electric ovens. And their purpose is to increase the heat in the oven.
7. Use the Correct Temperature
Temperature is usually more of a problem for home ovens than for pizza ovens. So if you own a pizza oven you can skip this one.
Professional pizza ovens reach temperatures around 800°F (427°C), while most home ovens can reach a temperature between 450 and 500°F (250 to 260°C).
Technically speaking you can’t have an oven that is too hot for a pizza. But practically, every pizza is different. If you were to cook a thick pizza at 1000°F (540°C), the bottom of the pizza will be completely burnt by the time the interior is completely cooked. So getting the oven as hot as you can is not always the best answer.
Buf if our pizza comes out of the oven undercooked, you shouldn’t worry about your oven being too hot. The problem is most likely that it’s not hot enough. Pizza should be cooked for as little time as possible at the highest temperature that you can achieve. So don’t be afraid of turning the gas up.
Final Thoughts
So those are the 7 reasons why your pizza dough is uncooked.
Here is a quick recap of the things that you need to do in order to make sure that your pizza dough cooks properly:
- Don’t use as many oily or wet toppings, or place them on some paper towels so that they can absorb excess humidity.
- Don’t overcrowd your pizza with toppings, the dough needs room to let steam out, if it can’t do that the dough won’t cook properly.
- Cold dough cooks unevenly, leaving your pizza uncooked on the interior, only use dough at room temperature
- Pizzas shouldn’t be thicker than 1 inch, the thicker the pizza the harder it will be to cook properly
- The sauce should only be added to the dough when you are ready to add the other toppings and place the pizza in the oven. If you add it too early the dough will absorb the sauce, and won’t be able to cook properly.
- Try placing your pizza closer to the bottom of the oven. Or use a pizza stone.
- Experiment with different temperatures until you find the right one. On average pizzas should be cooked between 450 and 500°F (250 to 260°C).