What Is A Pizza Competition?
Some people do a lot more with pizza than eat it. In fact, there are several people across the world who not only love to make it, they love to enter competitions that revolve around it. Here in the United States, people can enter local and regional competitions to try to get onto the United States Pizza Team, which competes once a year in Italy at the World Pizza Championship.
Each competition is a combination of several different contests. They have the Fastest Pizza Making, The Largest Dough Stretch, Freestyle Acrobatics, and Best Pizza; and for those who wish to really earn their stripes, they can enter the first three as the Triathlon. Competitors at the World Games can also compete in the Longest Spin and the Fastest Box Folding contests. Contestants are not required to compete in every contest.
Largest Dough Stretch
This contest gives everyone 5 minutes to toss or stretch their 18-ounce dough ball as large as they can without any tears. They use a special pizza dough recipe from cold water and half the yeast so the dough stretches as much as possible. Contestants can only use dusting flour to manipulate the dough. Holes can be fixed as long as it happens inside the time limit. The dough must be stretched out on the floor before the time limit is up and be in a round or oval shape. Judges measure both the widest and narrowest areas of the dough and make an average of the two measurements.
Freestyle Acrobatic Pizza Tossing
Freestyle is broken into two components. In the first part, contestants must score well while showing their mastery of compulsory moves. They are judged on knowledge, smoothness, and ease of movement. They must do a basic toss, the whip, toss a crust beneath their leg, and roll one over their back. Each trick must be demonstrated, and then shown at speed.
The second portion is freestyle. Set to music, contestants are judged on originality, presentation, and difficulty of their choreography and tricks. The judges look to see how entertaining they are and if they can engage the audience or not. This contest provides 10 8-ounce dough balls to divide among both parts.
Fastest Pizza Maker
In this contest, the contestant must stretch out up to 5 crusts and place them on 12 inch pizza screens. They can only use dusting flour to help work the dough. Each contestant gets 5 balls of dough for this contest. When all 5 are done, the timing is over only after the contestant has covered every scrap of screen that shows.
Pizza Box Folding
This contest measures how long it takes contestants to fold 5 12-inch boxes properly. The judges record each contestant to the hundredths of a second when timing them. Boxes that fall off the table during the rush of competition must be picked up by the contestant and placed back on the table before time is done.
Longest Dough Spin
The goal in this contest is to spin an 18-ounce dough over the contestant’s head using a single hand in the traditional position for as long as possible. Each contestant will have the dough already rolled out to a 14-inch round before the competition. The contestant cannot touch the dough until the contest begins. It is permissible to use both hands to throw the dough up into the air, but after that, only one hand must be used. The judge stops the timer once the dough falls below the contestant’s head.
Delivery pizzas might be convenient but nothing beats the flavor of homemade pizza. Making your own is much cheaper too. If you are new to pizza making, you can find plenty of useful tips and tricks at our site as well as a great selection of the very best homemade pizza recipes.
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