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 contains many smaller events. You can find contests for Freestyle Acrobatics with Dough, Largest Dough Stretch, Fastest Pizza Making, and Best Pizza. Some choose to compete in the acrobatics, the stretch, and the fastest competitions, which make up the Triathlon. Contestants do not have to compete in every event. The World Pizza Games also offers the Longest Spin contest and the Fastest Box Folding.
Largest Dough Stretch
This contest gives everyone 5 minutes to toss or stretch their 18-ounce dough ball as largee 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
This contest has two parts. First, everyone has to complete a set of compulsory moves judged on smoothness, knowledge, and ease of movement. They must demonstrate and then perform up to speed each movement, includeing a basic toss, the whip, tossing the dough under one leg and rolling the dough across their back.
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 quickly each contestant can properly fold 5 12-inch pizza boxes. All boxes that fall from the table during the competition must be replaced before time is up. Time is measured in the hundredths of a second.
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.
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