Hi Jacques, did you prove for the full 24 hours? And was your room temperature a bit cold? If so, this can slow the prove down. Also, I’m assuming you were using instant dried yeast?

If none of the points above were an issue then you must have a bad batch of yeast (it may contain dead cells). 7g is an awful lot of yeast to use and this amount would generally prove dough in around 2 hours.

Hope this helps.

Hi Nilofar, the minimum proving time that I recommend is 8 hours. Any less than this and the taste and texture of the dough won’t be as good as it could be. Quick dough is also very unforgiving since there is only a very small window of time when the dough is properly proved.

Feel free to check out my pizza dough calculator here. From there, you can select the size and number of pizzas you want to make, along with the prove time. The calculator will then give you the quantity of ingredients required.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Hi Carolyn, you could always adjust the amount of yeast to suit your timings. Using a little less yeast may help you as that would slow the prove down. Check out my pizza dough calculator here which may help.

Also, you can just delay the balling of your dough, as long as the dough isn’t overproving. But in general the best option would be to reduce the yeast slightly. A lot of pizza making comes down to trial and error and also watching the dough.

As the old saying goes: “watch the dough, not the clock”. If the dough is overproving it will need balling but if it isn’t then it can be left longer. If your dough balls are overproving you can simply reball them to delay the prove if needed.

I hope this helps, thanks for the question!

Hi Chris, it sounds to me like you added a little too much water. I always recommend quite a dry dough, at least until you become very confident with dough making and pizza shaping.

Next time, if your dough feels a little sticky when mixing, try mixing in more flour bit by bit until the dour feels quite dry (and not sticky).

One thing that can throw you off is that the dough becomes softer and more sticky after resting. A dough that is slightly sticky may seem fine after mixing but after proving it will probably become very sticky and difficult to work with.

Also, a dry dough after mixing will become much softer after resting and will have the advantage of being easy to work with. A drier dough is also much easier to knead and will be naturally stronger than a wetter dough.

With regards to the springing back during stretching, it’s difficult to say for sure what the problem was. The dough could’ve been underkneaded, overkneaded, underproved, or overproved. My guess is that the dough was underkneaded since a wet dough is quite difficult to knead. Also, after the 6 hours your dough should be nicely proved.

When it comes to proving, just make sure that your dough has about doubled in size and has small bubbles in it. At this point the dough is good to go.

In summary, I would add a little more flour so that your dough is quite dry after mixing. I would then be sure to knead the dough well before proving (which should be much easier). Everything else I would just leave the same. Your shaping should become much easier.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Hi Gordon, I’m so glad the pizzas turned out well for you! Keep going and it will soon become second nature. Making (and eating) amazing pizza is addictive!

Good luck!

Due to it being sticky I couldn’t pick it up off the work top with my peel or get it off the peel into the pizza oven.

My other issue was that when I was stretching and shaping the dough it kept springing back and not holding its shape well, have I over or under worked it?

Any help or advice would be appreciated thanks