Shaping thick crust pizza dough

Question

One of my favorite pizza styles is a nice thick, chewy crust around the outside - but of course thin enough crust under the toppings to cook properly. How does one work the dough into that shape?

Answer 1

Just make the base bigger than you need with the edge pulled slightly thiner than the main base, and then roll the edge inward on itself

You need to have nearly twice the extra width available than what you wish to roll up, otherwise it will unroll. Pinch it down at you go round and it should stay in place. Try not to get olive oil or other toppings on the edge before you complete it, or it may unwind during cooking

Put the pizza tray on a turntable (cake decorating or "lazy susan") to make the task easy. It is sort of a continuous motion of rolling, folding, and pinching down

You can put a little of some contrasting taste (to main toppings) on before you roll the edge, like olives, anchovies, chillies or herbs

BTW in traditional pizza with a properly hot oven, the crust (cornicione) puffs up because it has no topping on it, but this results in a crust that is only slightly fatter than the main base, or just big bubbles that break when you hold it. By doubling up the dough you get a real substantial crust

Answer 2

The raised rim is really just the natural consequence of a properly thrown pizza dough. I suspect that as pizza became more common, this simple fact got obscured with such inventions as "stuffed-crust" and rapid-rise freezer pizza.

Assuming you have a well developed and elastic dough, you can just learn the basic throwing process. If you want a thicker outer crust, you can grab more dough between your fingers when you are stretching it vertically. This also has the effect of adding more bulk at the edges, making the centrifugal force stronger, and thus stretching it out faster. So watch out!

As @TFD suggests, you can also be more deliberate about it, and gather the dough afterwards by rolling it up. With this technique, you can also stuff the crust, which is more difficult with the throwing method.