Argh....the curse of the rectangular pizza

if the dough stretches back then it needs to be relaxed.. but its all about techniques and experience with these things.

if your oven is rectangular and your pans have corners.  I make square pizzas all the time!

There are those who envy your ability!  :)

crider, that's a pretty good video. My pizza got better as soon as I stopped using bread flour for the dough. AP flour or even the Italian 00 flour is much easier to shape and stretch without tearing. The first part of stretching by poking with the fingers to establish the shape. Practice practice.

Eric

A couple suggestions. I concur that bread flour just makes a chewier,hard to  stretch crust. Use a lower gluten flour (AP as suggested) unless you like the chewier crust,which brings me to the next suggestion. It is ALL important to rest the dough in a ball for at least 15 minutes before shaping into a crust. It allows the fibers to relax and extend easily-as long as you handle it gently.

When the ball is relaxed, I generally flatten it gently into a disc and then stretch from underneath in each direction of the compass. I end up with a rectangle by design. Just add more compass points and it will round out. I think I tend to end up with a rectangle,also,because I am working  on a counter so tend to have some reaching issues in one direction.

If you stretch,handle too aggressively, it will instantly tighten up-like a muscle cramp. You then have to let it relax again.

Pizza crust is about the only thing I use this low-protein (10.5%) flour for, and it makes a nice, easy to handle, crispy crust that doesn't fight you trying to stretch it out.

I prefer to make mine with bread flour. I make the dough in the AM or the night before and let it rise on the counter all day. I went through a phase though where I ended up with rectangle pizzas. For me, it was because I was starting with a rectangle piece of dough. If I split the dough into end number of pizzas to be made, shape it into a ball and let it rise when I go to strech it comes out cicular. For a while I was letting the whole batch rise as one and then curtting off pieces... I ended up with mishapen pizzas since I started with a mishapen hunk. They all tasted good.. they just had some trouble fitting on the peel and stone :)

Robert

I am one of those left I guess that still uses bread flour for my pizza's.  Heck sometimes I even use bagel flour.  I make pizza's about every other weekend or so.  Sometimes more.  I just posted a new blog entry from yesterdays pizza's if you are interested in looking.  I too am a picture person. I find it much easier to understand when I see it rather than just reading about it.

As to the shape part.  I use a pizza screen to make my pizza.  It cost about 4 dollars u.s. at a restaurant supply house.  And it makes it easy to get a good circle because you are working your dough up to the edges of the screen and the screen kind of grabs the dough a little and kinda holds it in place to an extent.  It also works well in that you do not need to worry about the pizza sticking to the peel.  I use my peel to pick up the pizza, screen and all and slide into oven onto stone.  I pull screen out about half way through so pizza browns a little on bottom but you could leave in the whole time, its designed to bake with.

Have a great day,

TT

I use bread flour to which I add a little vital wheat gluten for an even higher protein content.  I do one overnight bulk ferment in the refrigerator, and one or two additonal cold ferments after I've made my dough balls.  I shape my pizzas as rectangles to fit a sheet of parchment paper which is just a tad smaller than my stone.

That video is great I just made some Beer Pizza Dough yesterday I'm still on odd shape pizzas.