The 2 main reasons for pizza dough being too sticky after rising (proofing) is that there's too much water in the recipe or the dough wasn't kneaded enough before proofing. As a guide aim for 60% hydration and knead for 5 or 6 minutes until the dough is smooth.
If you want to know which one is the reason for your sticky dough then start by working out your hydration ratio, to do that simply divide the amount of water by the amount of flour and multiply by 100. For example, I use 107g of flour and 64g of water per pizza so this is 64/107 which is 0.598 x100 which gives a hydration ratio of 59.8%.
Once you know your hydration ratio you can make a guess at what your issue is. If, like mine, you're at about 60% then your hydration is unlikely to be the issue and you should try kneading for longer or use a different technique.
If however you're hydration is closer to 70% then this could be the issue, try reducing the amount of water in the recipe or rasing the amount of flour (or both) to get to around 60% and see if the final dough improves.
The last couple of things to check is how long your proofing for, over proofing can cause problems with the dough becoming too soft and breaking easily which might make you think it's sticky when it's actually overproofed.
Lastly, if that's not the issue then have a look at your ingredients, you might find that your flour doesn't have high enough protein levels as it's this that helps to form the gluten bonds and make the dough elastic and stretchy rather than sticky and breakable.
If you think that could be the case then head over to our recommended gear page where you can pick up some Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour that's perfect for the job.
