Nothing is as annoying as sticky pizza dough, you can’t knead it properly, you can’t give it a proper shape, and sometimes you can’t even get it out of the bowl. So why is this happening?
The most common cause for sticky pizza dough is using too much water. But there are other things that can make a pizza dough sticky, some other common causes are improper kneading, using the wrong flour type, not paying attention to the humidity of the room.
As you can see, there are quite a few things that can make a pizza dough sticky, fortunately, there are a few ways to fix this problem. But, in order to fix a sticky pizza dough, you first have to know why your dough is sticky in the first place, so let’s start with that.
Why Your Pizza Dough Is Sticky
The reason why a pizza dough becomes too sticky is simple, it has too much water in it. But figuring out why it has too much water in it is not always that simple, as there are more causes besides using too much water.
Hydration Level
But, indeed adding too much water to the dough is one of the most common reasons why your dough is too sticky.
All dough has a hydration level, which represents how much water you have in rapport to the flour. A hydration level of 50% means that you have 50 grams of water for every 100 grams of flour. A hydration level of 75% means that you are using 75 grams of water for every gram of flour.
On average a good hydration level that will work with most flour types ( more about flour types in just a moment) is 60%.
The hydration level will have a huge impact on the consistency of your pizza, on how fluffy it is. But it will also affect the stickiness of your dough.
Here is a short video showing how pizza will turn out using different hydration levels, I’ve set the video to start at the moment it shows all three of them:
As you can see in the video you can use a hydration level higher than 60%, but the dough will become very sticky.
How to Solve This Problem
In most cases you should aim for a hydration level of 60%. While it is possible to work with a 70%, or even 75%, it is way more difficult, and there is no guarantee that the dough won’t be too sticky.
If you are already using 60% but the dough is still too sticky you should try to lower it a bit. Just make sure that you don’t go lower than 50%. The most common reason why 60% can be too much for pizza is the type of flour used.
Different Flour Types
Flour is separated into different categories using a rating system. One problem with the rating system is that it’s not uniform worldwide, a lot of countries have their own, including the US, and Italy, as well as France and Germany. Here is the rating system, with the different names each country has for the flour types, and what that actually means.
| Ash Content | Protein | US | Italian | French | German |
| 0.4% | 9% | Pastry Flour | 00 | 45 | 405 |
| 0.5% | 11% | All-Purpose Flour | 0 | 55 | 550 |
| 0.8% | 14% | High Gluten Flour | 1 | 80 | 812 |
| 1% | 15% | First Clear Flour | 2 | 110 | 1050 |
| 1.5% | 13% | Whole Wheat Flour | Faina Integrale | 150 | 1700 |
In the US you will most likely see the US grading system, but it’s not uncommon to see flour that is marketed towards pizza makers labeled as 00 instead of pastry flour. And keep in mind that if a recipe tells you to use 00 flour, you can use Pastry Flour, as it’s the same thing.
But regardless of what system you are using to rate the flour, you have to know that there is are differences between a flour rated 00 and another rated 0. The biggest one is how fine the flour is 00 being the finest one of them all.
How fine the flour is ground will have a huge effect on how much water it can absorb and what texture the pizza will have.
Another big important difference is the protein content. The table that I showed you contains the average, a flour marked 00 can have up to 15% protein. When making pizza you want to use flour with at least 13% protein. The amount of protein a four can greatly influence how much water the flour can absorb.
And one final thing to keep in mind about flour is that not all flour brands are the same, even if they are both marked as 00. Different companies have different sources for their wheat, so the final product will be different. So make sure to check the nutritional table on the flour, and not pick the first one that is marked as 00, or as Pastry Flour.
If you are not sure which flour to pick, I would suggest you try Caputo, which can be found in most stores, and you can also order it on Amazon.
How to Solve This Problem
Different flour types can absorb different quantities of water. This is why I would suggest you stick to Pastry Flour, also known as 00 flour, this is the type of flour that most pizzerias use.
And keep in mind that not all 00 flours are the same. For the best results, you should use one that has at least 13% protein.
The protein content drastically affects how much water a flour can absorb, and 13% is considered by most people the sweat spot for pizza dough.
Humidity
Humidity, or the lack of it, can be a really big problem when making pizza, especially since there are not that many things that you can do to control it.
Think of your pizza dough as a sponge and of your kitchen as a bucket. If there is water in the bucket the sponge will absorb it. And so will the dough do with the humidity in the kitchen.
Fortunately, this is not such a big problem, and will only affect your pizza if there is a lot of humidity in the air. Say for example if you were boiling a pot full of water in the kitchen while the dough is rising.
How to Solve This Problem
The best way to protect your dough from excessive or insufficient humidity is to cover the bowl with plastic wrap. This should keep all the humidity of the dough in the bowl, and the humidity of the room won’t affect the dough at all.
Insufficient Kneading
The final thing that could be making your dough too sticky could be not kneading it enough.
On average a pizza should be kneaded for at least 15 minutes, in order to develop a good and strong gluten network.
Gluten is what gives pizza dough its elasticity and reduces its stickiness. If your dough doesn’t develop a proper gluten network it will break when you try to stretch it, or you won’t be able to stretch it at all because it will stick to your hands or you to the work surface.
As a side note, you should know that kneading the dough too much can also make the gluten too strong, and as a result, the dough will be as hard as rubber and, while it won’t stick anymore, it will also be impossible to stretch it. But this happens very rarely, and if you are kneading by hand you should easily feel if this is the case.
Now that we’ve seen why your pizza dough is too sticky, let’s see what you can do to prevent this from happening, and then have a look at what you can do to fix your sticky dough.
How to Solve This Problem
In most cases kneading the dough for 15 minutes should be enough, but everybody kneads their dough in a different way. Some do it more actively while others move at a slower pace, some apply a lot of pressure, while others are gentler. So, timing for how long you knead the dough is not the best solution.
What you should be doing instead is checking the consistency and stickiness of the dough. If your dough is too sticky you should knead it some more.
Another great way to test is using the windowpane test.
This is a very simple test that will tell you if you’ve kneaded your dough enough.
Take a small piece of dough and gently start stretching it out, and see if you can obtain a slightly transparent layer in the middle. If you can then you’ve kneaded the dough perfectly.
If the dough breaks too easily it means that you have to knead it a little more.
If the dough is too hard to stretch, and when you finally manage to stretch it breaks, it means that you’ve over kneaded and you need to start all over.
And here is a video showing how you can do this test:
How to Fix a Sticky Pizza Dough
Now you know why your pizza dough is too sticky, and you also know what you should do in order to prevent this from happening again. But chances are that right now you already have a dough in front of you that is too sticky, so let’s see what you can do to fix it.
Knead It Some More
The first thing that you should do in order to make your pizza less sticky is to knead it some more.
Kneading pizza will make it less sticky, even after it has risen. It’s perfectly fine to knead your dough after it has risen, after all, stretching the pizza and kneading it are kind of similar, in both cases, you apply pressure to the dough.
Just make sure that you don’t apply too much pressure as this can be bad for the gluten that is already formed.
I know from personal experience that kneading sticky dough can be a real hassle, it really works, and after every kneading that you do, you will see that the dough becomes easier and easier to handle.
This method should work in 90% of the cases. The only cases in which it won’t work is when the dough has way too much water in it, and no amount of kneading will be able to solve this. But even in those cases, there is a solution.
Add More Flour
If kneading the dough won’t fix your dough, you should try to add some extra flour to it.
The best way to add flour to pizza dough is to sprinkle some on the work surface and then knead the dough over that flour. This way the flour will be incorporated equally all over the dough, and no clumps will form in the dough.
As for how much flour to add, it really depends on how much water you used in the first place. Chances are that you have a hydration level that is too high, and now you should try to lower the hydration level by adding more flour.
You could technically do a few complicated equations to figure out the exact amount of flour that you need to add, but I believe that it’s simpler to just add 50 more grams of flour at the beginning, and depending on how the dough is after 2 minutes of kneading, add a few more grams to it until it’s not sticky anymore.
When you decide that you’ve added enough flour to the dough, and you’ve kneaded until there is no more visible flour left, you should let it rest for at least 30 minutes. While the new flour is incorporated into the dough, it’s still not entirely hydrated. If you don’t let it rest for a few minutes, the dough will have an unpleasant, floury taste.
Before ending the article I would also like to cover two small but very similar topics, and those are preventing the dough from sticking to the bowl and preventing the dough from sticking to your hands.
How to Prevent the Dough From Sticking to the Bowl
Even if the dough is not too sticky to properly stretch it, a very common problem that people have is that the dough sticks too much to the bowl.
Solving this problem is extremely easy, just put some olive oil on your hand and spread it all over the bowl. If when you are done there is a small puddle of oil at the bottom of the bowl, you should throw it away, as it’s not needed.
You can use sunflower oil as well, but the olive oil will give the dough a slightly better taste, while sunflower oil is tasteless.
How to Prevent the Dough From Sticking to Your Hands
If you can’t knead the dough properly because it sticks to your hands you should put either olive oil or water on your hands before kneading.
If the dough is very sticky you should use oil, but if the dough is just a little bit sticky you can use water as it’s easier to clean and it won’t make the dough any stickier.
Final Thoughts
While it will take a little bit of work, any dough can be fixed, no matter how sticky it is. All you have to do is knead it until it stops being sticky, and if the dough is so sticky that you can’t handle it properly you can add some extra flour to make it easier to handle.
But as I said in the beginning, it’s more important to know why your dough is sticky, so that you can prevent it from happening, than knowing how to fix it. So here is a recap on what you should do in order to prevent your dough from becoming sticky:
- Aim for a hydration level of 60%, this means that for every 100 grams of flour you are using 60 grams of water.
- Use Pastry Flour (also known as 00 flour), with at least 13% protein.
- Put a plastic wrap over the bowl in which your dough is rising, this will prevent the room humidity from interfering with the dough.
- Knead your dough properly, the best way to test if you’ve kneaded your dough enough is to use the windowpane test.
As long as you follow those indications, you shouldn’t have any more problems of any kind with your dough.