Want your homemade pizza to be round? Here's the stupidest advice you've been waiting for: Just make it round. It's that simple.

Will your pizza go round in circles, and will your guests fly high like a bird up in the sky--all because your homemade pizza is finally round?
 
Apologies to Billy Preston.

But maybe that song is a good alternative to having this conversation. Here, see if this is better for you than making round pizza: https://youtu.be/U5-bJkoLWMY?si=2npbZpF_VbER_Ey6.​

May that song be your weekend earworm. You could do worse. (Trivia: Billy Preston is often considered the Fifth Beatle. Lennon actually suggested adding him to the band. McCartney asked if he was kidding, saying that it's hard enough making a decision with only four people. Imagine trying to come to an accord on pizza toppings.)
 
So, what’s all this have to do with pizza?
 
Here's the story...


Last week, I was faced with an amateur’s dilemma.
 
Since you and I don’t have quite the same equipment and protocols as restaurants, and because dinner guests are unpredictable, pizza dough left out for prep can become too warm.
 
Faced with dinner guests who were an hour late, and cocktail hour going too long, my dough was behaving badly.
 
Any longer sitting out, and I’d be pouring my pizzas onto a griddle and serving them with maple syrup.
 
I stretched the first pizza, put it onto the peel and dressed it. Then, I gave the peel a little shake to make sure the pizza was ready for launch.
 
 
The raw pizza stuck to the peel, and went from round to amoebic.
 
Despite that, it fairly quickly released from the peel, and became launchable.
 
But still, it was ugly.
 
I thought, Well this sucks.
 
I never like serving my guests a pizza that’s less than round. Round is satisfying. It’s part of the fun. Wholeness, totality, rebirth, balance, harmony, cosmic unity, and all that. 
 
Instead, this pizza was the shape of a damaged kite that had just slammed into the beach. Points and flat parts and shapes that don’t belong in a pizza crust.
 
And as I was about to slide it into the oven, I thought, Wait a sec.
 
 
Follow your own advice, dude. Just make it round.
 
I tell people this all the time. Dough is not plastic and unchangeable. It doesn’t have a mind of its own.
 
It’s flexible. It can be manipulated.
 
As long as it’s warm enough, dough doesn’t care what shape it is.
 
So just make it round.
 
I pulled the peel away from the oven, closed the oven door, and put the peel back on the counter.
 
I went at the edges of the pizza with both hands. I pulled it, pushed it, prodded it a little, returned it to round, then launched it.
 
And it came out round.
 
Well, round enough.
 
 
It looked like a pizza, and not a cartoon drawing of something under a microscope.
 
Just make it round.
 
If you watch some of the pros do it in videos, especially the ones doing it Neapolitan style, they're assembling the whole pizza right on the counter.
 
(That’s instead of on a wooden peel as I recommend in my book, and as you see done in countless numbers of pizzerias across this great land of ours.)
 
Once the pizza is ready to bake, the pro in the video grabs the pizza by the ears (so to speak), pulls it out of round and into amoeba as they’re sliding it onto a perforated metal peel.
 
Then, they re-organize it back to round and launch it.
 
They make it look easy.
 
That’s because it is.
 
But until you actually do it, it feels like it’s impossible.
 
 
The easy way to begin making a round pizza is to start with a round doughball.
 
If you haven’t figured out how to make the doughball round to start with, check out the super secret video at my website.
 
This video is only for readers of my weird little book, but I’m letting you peek into the video library that I’ve hidden in plain sight.
 
Once you have your bulk dough and you’re breaking it down into dough balls, make them round.
 
The video shows just one of several ways to make a dough ball, and it’s a method that's easy to understand.
 
If you’re nervous about getting them to stay round, you can put them into round containers.
 
For smaller doughballs, I just use Ziploc Twist N Loc Meal Prep Food Storage Containers--which have become stupidly expensive at Amazon, so I also use the Plasticpro knock-offs. They’re a great size for smaller dough balls.
 
Bigger doughballs can be a challenge. I’m still looking for the perfect container for them. (I even bought some big, professional aluminum proofing tins. Don’t bother. They’re expensive (and you have to buy the lids separately) and they're a big hassle unless your home kitchen has a giant commercial-size refrigerator.)
 
In the meantime, I just leave the bigger dough balls (400 grams/14 ounces) in a plastic bag on a shelf in the fridge. 
 
I know they’ll stay round as long as I don’t pile jars of mustard and cans of beer on top of them.

 
Starting with an already round ball is very helpful.
 
Then, stretching in the round is also helpful.
 
You could watch the other super secret video of stretching a doughball right here also.
 
Note: This is not the only way to stretch dough. There are many, many, many other ways to do it. This is one I use for smaller dough balls. It’s not appropriate for making a 21-inch pizza. But since few home ovens have room for anything that big, we’re not going to worry about it.
 
When I transfer the stretched pizza to the peel, once again: not so round.
 
So I just make it round.
 
 
If it helps, envision your finished pizza as round. Creative visualization is something used in pro sports all the time.
 
Successful pro athletes visualize themselves performing the desired act.
 
Some of my most outrageously successful pizza nights have been prefaced by a fully-formed vision of each pizza and the ecstatic guests who scarf them down.
 
And compared to guiding an 87mph luge through 20 turns at a 9.8% grade and 420 feet of vertical drop across the 9/10 of a mile of the Mount Van Hovenberg Olympic Bobsled Run at Lake Placid, stretching a 6-ounce ball of pizza dough into a flat round shape with a diameter of 10 inches is a piece of cake and easy as pie.
 
With the pizza (not the luge) just adjust all the parts that aren’t yet in the right place to make it round.
 
The pizza dough is waiting for you to do it.
 
Just make it round.
 
Yes, it sounds like idiotic simplicity.
 
Try it anyway.
 
TRY just making it round. Break through that wall of amoebic-shaped fear and loathing and take charge.
 
 
Pizza dough is your friend.
 
I’ve said that before and I will say it again.
 
The dough is just lying there, waiting for you to control it. I promise you, it is that simple.
 
Any part of the stretched dough that isn’t a circle just needs to be re-organized.
 
I do it all the time with overly stretchy dough.
 
None of my pizzas are round when they hit the peel.
 
They always need to be made to behave.
 
And they really do want it that way…
 
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Want to learn how to make pizza starting at zero (including the round part)? My weird little book is one way to do it—and it’s really a manual for how to get from zero to pizza. There’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than print and has active links to the videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​