4 Expert Tips To Keep Your Dough From Puffing Up In The Oven

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Picture this: you tried out a new dish this week, like our beer-based pizza dough recipe. You want to bake the dough naked and load up with toppings afterward. As the dough bakes in the oven, it puffs up in the middle, like a balloon. While still edible, the aesthetics of the pizza is lacking. You want the crust to be puffy, not the center. Since this has happened to us a few times before, we've consulted an expert for some tips on keeping pizza dough from puffing up in the oven. We spoke with Tony Gemignani, a 13-time World Pizza Champion, and the chef and owner of many restaurants including Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco. 

"This can be complicated because the dough tends to puff up and rise and/or crack in the middle," Gemignani explains. "There are a few tricks that you could do. One of them is by putting ice cubes in the middle [of the dough]." In the oven, the ice cubes help weigh down the dough, like pie weights. Essentially, when you're baking a naked pizza dough, it's like blind baking a pie crust. The extra weight in the middle prevents the dough from ballooning or puffing up. Additionally, the moisture from the melting ice helps improve the dough's texture. 

If you don't have access to ice at the moment you're about to bake the pizza dough naked, fret not. "Put a solid surface like a bowl or a cast-iron skillet on top of the dough once you've landed it in your oven," Gemignani suggests. The idea behind this is to weigh down the dough so that as it heats up in the oven, the air trying to escape inside doesn't cause the dough to puff up like a balloon. You may want to dust the dough lightly with flour or semolina flour, or lightly grease the bottom of the bowl or skillet to prevent the dough from sticking to the solid surface. 

Another way to avoid the crust puffing up is by adding some holes to the pizza. "Docking a pizza will also help with this as it degases the dough, not allowing it to puff up in the middle," Gemignani says. "Docking is a term when you roll over your dough and put mini holes in it, so it degases." To do this, you can use a fork or a pizza docker (or dough docker), one of the 20 kitchen tools that will help you make a perfect pizza.

Gemignani's fourth and final tip to keep your pizza dough from puffing up in the oven will please the cheese lovers. He states, "Adding a light amount of cheese to the middle of your dough will also help weigh your dough down and prevent it from puffing up." The cheese, like shredded mozzarella, will act as added weight and add a delightful cheesiness to the dough. 

So, if you're thinking of making delicious pizza this week, like our homemade Margherita pizza recipe, be sure to follow Gemignani's expert tips to prevent the dough from puffing up like a balloon. You can experiment to see which of his tips works best for you when you're baking a naked pizza dough. It is possible to mix up and match the tips and not adhere to just one of them. For example, you can always dock the dough first, using a pizza docker like this under $10 one by Orblue, and then add ice or cheese, or a mix of both, to the middle.