Pizza Stretch Geometry | Interactive Dough Lab & Weight Calculator
Every stretch
leaves a trace.
A little flour. A little physics. Stretch a virtual pizza dough, reveal its hidden thickness, and find the geometry in your fingertips.
Touch. Pull gently. See what changes. Dashed circle = initial / 30 cm guide.
Beautifully imperfect.
Mathematically yours.
Every local pull redistributes the same virtual volume. Your path becomes a fingerprint; the cross-section reveals what the outline cannot.
Beneath the surface
A center-line sample. Height is relative to the initial sheet, not millimetres. Saved experiments stay in your browser.
Twice as wide.
A quarter as thick.
For a circular sheet with conserved volume, area grows with the square of diameter. Spread the same material over four times the area and the mean thickness falls to one quarter.
h₁ / h₀ = A₀ / A₁
Initial diameter: 15 cm. Uniform expansion illustration.
Area multiplier
Relative mean thickness
A circle is only the beginning.
Perfect circle
30 cm, with roundness ≥ 95%.
Save the center
30 cm, with less than 5% thin area.
Even stretch
30 cm, with uniformity ≥ 80%. Try rim protection and compare.
Dough Detective — same outline, different center
Two 250 g, 30 cm doughs: A puts 180 g in the outer ring and 70 g in the center. B puts 130 g in the same outer ring and 120 g in the same center. Which has the thinner center? Assume equal density and equal region areas.
Find your starting weight.
Choose a diameter and dough loading in grams per square centimetre. The calculator multiplies area by loading. This is raw dough mass per area, not baked crust height.
Default 0.35 g/cm² is an editable example, not a universal style recommendation. 30 cm gives about 247 g. Applying a diameter resets the mesh to a uniform sheet.
Let the dough teach you.
Real pizza dough is viscoelastic. Gluten development, temperature, fermentation and resting all affect how it stretches and springs back. If dough resists shaping, giving it time to rest can help.
Press gently, work outward, and rotate to distribute the stretch. A thicker outer rim retains material that is absent from the center.
Further reading: King Arthur Baking — shaping a round pizza · dough rest and stretch.
Model notes / version 1.0
This educational mesh uses 720 triangles. Each triangle keeps its initial volume: relative thickness = initial area ÷ current area. The outer polygon gives area and perimeter; roundness = 4πA/P². Uniformity = max(0, 1 − area-weighted thickness coefficient of variation). Thin area means below 25% of initial thickness.
Finger, gravity, rim and rolling modes are illustrative interaction rules. There is no calibrated gluten, gas or tear model. Outputs do not predict real dough thickness in mm, dough failure, or baking results.
A few things to know.
How do I stretch the virtual pizza dough?
Drag a point outward. Use X-Ray to inspect the thickness map. For keyboard control, focus the canvas and use arrow keys, or use Expand +5% and Rotate.
Why does the center get thin?
A local region becomes thinner as its area grows while its material volume stays the same. Different gestures can create different thickness maps with a similar outline.
Does this predict tears in real dough?
No. Thin zones are defined by an educational threshold, not by measured tear risk. Real dough depends on ingredients and handling.
Where is my experiment stored?
Only when you press Save on device, the mesh is saved in your browser local storage. You can reset the lab or clear browser site data. Fingerprints download as PNG files.
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