How to Launch a Pizza Without a Disaster

The three causes of a folded pizza

Time. The base sat on the peel while you assembled it. Moisture from the dough wets the flour underneath, the flour turns to paste, and the paste glues the base down. On metal this takes about a minute; on wood, several.

Wet contact. Sauce or oil went over the edge of the base and onto the peel. Nothing releases from that.

Hesitation. The launch is one committed movement. A slow, careful launch gives the base time to grip, and half-in-half-out is how a pizza ends up folded.

The routine

1. Dust the peel with semolina or fine cornmeal, not plain flour. Coarse grains roll under the base like bearings; plain flour absorbs moisture and turns to paste. Use a light, even layer - a heavy one burns on the stone.
2. Put the stretched base on the peel before you dress it. Not after. A dressed pizza transferred onto a peel is a dressed pizza that has already stuck to whatever it was on.
3. Shake the peel immediately, and keep shaking. A short sharp back-and- forth. The base should slide a centimeter and come back. Do this once at the start and again every 20 seconds as you dress. The moment it stops sliding, stop dressing and deal with it.
4. Dress fast, and stay inside the edge. Leave a clear border, and be deliberately mean with the sauce. Wet toppings at the edge are the second cause above.
5. Launch at a shallow angle, low and committed. Peel tip almost touching the surface at the far side of where the pizza will land. Tip forward a few degrees so the leading edge of the base catches on the stone, then pull the peel straight back in one movement. Do not jerk it, and do not creep.
6. Close the door. Do not adjust it. A pizza that landed slightly off center bakes fine; a pizza you tried to nudge with a peel does not.

When it sticks before you launch

Lift the stuck edge with a bench scraper or a spatula, throw a pinch of semolina into the gap, and set it back down. Repeat around the base until it slides again. This works and it takes ten seconds.

If half of it is stuck, slide a scraper right under, lift the whole base off, dust the peel properly and put it back. You will lose a little shape and nothing else.

When it sticks mid-launch

The worst moment, and there is a right move: keep going forward. Push the peel further in so the pizza flattens onto the surface, then pull straight back sharply. A pizza that is half on the stone and half on the peel gets worse every second you spend deciding.

If it lands folded, open the oven and unfold it with tongs in the first 20 seconds, before the dough sets. After about 30 seconds on a hot surface it will not unfold, and you have made a calzone.

The parchment shortcut, and its cost

Build the pizza on a sheet of parchment, launch parchment and all, and pull the paper out after 60 to 90 seconds once the base has set. It works reliably and it is the right answer for anyone who has just cracked a stone or lost three pizzas in a row.

The cost: for that first minute the base is separated from the surface by paper, which is exactly the minute when a hot surface does its most useful work. Check the paper's own temperature rating too - many are 425 to 450 F, below where a pizza bake sits.

What a peel cannot fix

A base that is too wet, too thin in the middle, or too big for the blade. If your dough is running at high hydration and you are new to it, drop to a stiffer dough while you learn the launch, then go back up. Stretching evenly is covered in how to stretch pizza dough.