Pizza troubleshooter
Choose what you saw — up to three things — and, if you know them, what you baked on, the style and the bake. PizzaHQ ranks the likely causes from its 57 documented symptoms, 137 recorded causes and 36 equipment-specific branches, and for each one says why it fits, how to tell it apart from its neighbours, what you can still rescue, and what to change next time.
Ranked causes
Most likely
Sauce or toppings spread all the way to the dough's edge
Generally acceptedToppings · from Toppings or sauce placed too close to the rim
Weight and moisture at the very edge restrict how much that section of the rim can rise, and it's often visibly flatter than the bare parts of the same rim once baked.
- Why it fits
- Recorded cause of "Toppings or sauce placed too close to the rim", ranked 1 of 2 by PizzaHQ's editors.
- How to tell it apart
- You meant to leave a border, but sauce or toppings ran over it in places, and only those sections of rim stayed flat.
- Rescue it now
- Nothing to do once baked; for the next pizza, leave a consistent bare border before adding sauce or toppings
- Next time
- Leave roughly a 1-2cm bare border around the whole edge before topping, for any style meant to have a raised rim
Toppings or sauce placed too close to the rimHow to balance toppings betterUsing premade and par-baked pizza bases
No deliberate border left when shaping or topping
Generally acceptedShaping · from Toppings or sauce placed too close to the rim
Styles with a defining raised rim (Neapolitan, New York) rely on a consistently bare 1-2cm border to inflate freely and evenly around the whole circumference.
- Why it fits
- Recorded cause of "Toppings or sauce placed too close to the rim", ranked 2 of 2 by PizzaHQ's editors.
- How to tell it apart
- There was never a consistent bare border, so rim height varies all the way round with how close the sauce came.
- Rescue it now
- Nothing to do once baked; for the next pizza, leave a consistent bare border before adding sauce or toppings
- Next time
- Leave roughly a 1-2cm bare border around the whole edge before topping, for any style meant to have a raised rim
Toppings or sauce placed too close to the rimHow to balance toppings betterUsing premade and par-baked pizza bases
How this works
Every cause shown is one PizzaHQ has already documented, either on a symptom page or as an equipment-specific branch. The troubleshooter does not invent causes; it ranks the documented ones against what you told it.
A cause starts from its recorded evidence confidence and its editorial rank within its symptom. An equipment-specific cause for the equipment you used rises sharply, and causes for equipment you are not using are set aside. A kind of cause (bake environment, fermentation, toppings…) that also explains another thing you saw rises again — one explanation for two observations is more likely than two separate faults.
If you name a style, its recorded equipment fit, bake temperature and bake time are compared with yours; a bake far outside the style's range, or equipment PizzaHQ records as a compromise for that style, raises the heat and equipment causes and says why.
Assumptions
- Causes are bucketed — most likely, also possible, less likely — rather than given a percentage; the underlying ranking is additive and every addition is listed under 'Why it fits'.
- 'How to tell it apart' is the observation PizzaHQ records as distinguishing that cause from the symptom's others.
- Bake temperature and time only count when a style is chosen, because they are judged against that style's recorded range.
Limitations
- Only documented symptoms can be diagnosed. If what you see is not listed, the closest symptom page is the better starting point.
- Equipment-specific branches exist where equipment genuinely changes the answer; most dough-stage problems have none, by design.
- A ranking is a starting point for checking, not a verdict — the distinguishing observations are there so you can confirm or rule out each cause yourself.