Mastery of pizza dough is a combination of both science and intuition—and lots and lots of practice. Gluten development is a crucial factor in the process. Proper gluten development gives you the right balance of elasticity (spring-back) and extensibility (the ability to stretch), both essential traits when you’re shaping your pizza.

Without getting too technical, gluten is a network of proteins—glutenin and gliadin—found in wheat flour. Add water to the flour and knead the mixture, and these proteins combine to form gluten, making it nice and stretchy.

To check your dough’s gluten development, there’s a tried-and-true method you should know about: the windowpane test. Here’s how it works:

1. Take a small piece of dough—it can be the size of a golf ball or even smaller.

2. Gently stretch the dough between your fingers, pulling it outward.

3. Observe closely as the dough stretches. If it can be stretched thin enough to let light pass through without tearing—forming a windowpane effect—your gluten has developed sufficiently. But the clearer the window, the better. If the window is smooth with a consistent density throughout, the gluten strands are forming and bonding as needed. If you see areas in the window that are thick (appearing as dark spots when backlit), mix for a few more minutes until the window clears up. You can still get these dark spots without tearing the dough, meaning you’ve got an undermixed batch, so perform this test to be sure.

Of course, passing the windowpane test alone isn’t enough to guarantee high-quality dough. And many experienced pizza makers say the test is more important for short fermentations, such as when you’re making emergency dough or dough that will rise for a few hours at room temperature. 

For example, according to PizzaBlab’s The Encyclopizza, “It is important to note that the windowpane [test] is irrelevant for long-fermented pizza dough. When fermenting the dough for over eight hours at room temperature or over 18 hours in the fridge, our goal is not to achieve full gluten development at the end of kneading. This is because the gluten will continue to develop biochemically during fermentation.”

For short fermentations, however, The Encyclopizza adds, “The limited fermentation time does not provide enough opportunity for biochemical gluten development. Therefore, it becomes necessary to primarily develop the gluten through kneading and/or folding.” With intensive kneading, you should get full gluten development that passes the windowpane test.