How to get an airier crust

An open, airy rim is built during fermentation, protected during shaping, and inflated by heat. Most flat rims are lost at the shaping stage, not the oven.

What you are aiming for

A rim that inflates in the oven into a light, open, irregular crumb rather than staying dense and bready.

Why it happens

Gas produced during fermentation collects in bubbles held by the gluten network. In the oven, that trapped gas expands rapidly and steam forms, inflating the rim before the crust sets and locks the shape in. Three things have to be true: enough gas has to be there, the gluten has to be strong enough to hold it, and the heat has to arrive fast enough to expand it before the surface sets.

What actually moves it

Levers are grouped by where in the process they sit, and within each group the strongest come first. Anything marked commonly overrated is advice you will see elsewhere that does less than it is credited with — and says why.

Bake

High enough heat to inflate the rim before the crust sets
Primary lever
Rim inflation is a race between gas expansion and crust setting. At 250 °C the crust tends to set first and the rim browns rather than puffing; above roughly 350 °C the gas wins.

Dough

Higher hydration
Significant
More water means more steam in the oven and a more extensible dough that stretches around expanding bubbles rather than resisting them. Most genuinely open crumb sits above 65% hydration.
Good gluten development through folding rather than heavy kneading
Significant
The network needs to be strong enough to hold large bubbles without tearing. Stretch-and-fold or coil folds build that strength while preserving the large gas pockets that heavy mechanical mixing breaks up.

Fermentation

Adequate but not excessive fermentation
Significant
Under-fermented dough has too little gas to inflate; over-fermented dough has a degraded gluten network that cannot hold what gas it has, and collapses instead.
More yeast
Commonly overrated
Extra yeast produces gas faster but does not produce a better structure to hold it.
Why it is overstated: It is a common response to a flat crust and usually makes things worse: fast gas production with an undeveloped gluten network gives a dough that rises and then collapses, and skips the slow flavour development entirely.

Shaping

Not pressing the gas out of the rim when shaping
Primary lever
Hand-stretching from the centre outward pushes gas into the rim and leaves it there. A rolling pin removes it from the entire disc, which is why rolled dough almost never produces an open cornicione — this is usually the whole explanation for a flat rim.

Workflow

Letting balled dough come to room temperature before shaping
Supporting
Cold dough is stiff, resists stretching, and tears rather than extending — which forces heavier handling and pushes gas out.

Fix it on this pizza

Stop using a rolling pin and stretch by hand, leaving the outer 1–2 cm completely untouched.
Preserves the gas already in the rim, which is the whole substrate for inflation.
Let cold dough balls sit at room temperature for 1–2 hours before shaping.
Makes the dough extensible, so shaping needs far less force and degasses less.

Change it for good

Raise hydration in steps of 3–5% and use coil folds to build strength.
A more extensible, better-structured dough that opens rather than resists during shaping.
Get the bake hotter — a well-preheated steel high in the oven, or a gas pizza oven or hot BBQ.
Gives the gas time to expand before the crust sets, which a 250 °C oven struggles to do.
Introduce a poolish or biga.
Improves extensibility and gas retention alongside flavour, rather than only adding gas.

What it costs you

An airy rim is a fragile rim. High-hydration, openly-fermented dough is harder to handle, harder to launch, tears more easily, and is far less tolerant of a heavy topping load. It also makes for a rim with large holes that sauce and cheese fall through if the pizza is topped to the edge.

How far you can realistically get

A genuinely dramatic, canotto-style rim needs heat a domestic oven does not have. In a 250 °C oven with a steel you can get a visibly lighter, more open rim than a standard bake gives; you cannot get the balloon rim of a 450 °C oven, and no dough change substitutes for the heat.

Evidence

Strongly supported

Modernist Pizza — The Cooking Lab
International Regulation for True Neapolitan Pizza (Disciplinare Internazionale) — Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN)
The Science of Fermentation: The Secret to Good Pizza — Baking Steel