When making homemade pizza dough, a critical step is proofing, or letting the yeast ferment so the dough grows to twice its size. However, if you let your dough sit too long and it becomes overproofed, the power of the yeast may have been used up and your dough won't rise in the oven — but it can be used for something else.

Overproofed pizza dough that grows to more than double its size may be overly sticky and stretchy, concave and flat, or even smell like alcohol. However, if the dough doesn't smell like beer yet, you can use it to make a denser, flatter flatbread pizza, or bake it by itself and turn it into croutons or breadcrumbs.

Alternatively, Mama-Cucina says you can save overproofed pizza dough by using the "knockback" technique, which involves removing the excess air in your dough. Simply push down on the dough to release all the air, as if you are kneading it, then pick it up and squeeze to ensure no air is left before making your pizza.