As I recall...

First roll it out in a generally round shape.

Flour your hands (at least the backs of them). Get the dough on the backs of your hands (otherwise your fingers will poke holes thru the dough). Extend your thumbs and fingers to support the dough. Your thumbs should almost be touching, and your pinky fingers will be supporting the pie near the edges, farther around the circle.

Gently stretch the dough a bit, more from the outside of the pie than the inside. You'll see how it is stretching and thinning, and you can adjust where you are stretching the dough to get the thickness you want.

lift one hand a bit (or lower the other one a bit) so you can reposition the "inferior" hand a few inches around the pie.
"switch" the height of each hand so the "other" hand can catch up to the new location (you just rotated the pie a bit) and do another stretch.

Get good at this, and then it becomes pretty easy to throw the pie up while giving it a spin. Again, since you are catching the pie on the back of your hands it should not tear.

Good luck...

H

i make pizza all the time and can't throw it to save my life. i also have trouble geting it off the peel and onto the stone (and vice versa) so i just stretch and pull the dough into a round shape. i do it on a piece of parchment paper, which makes it easier since i can spin the paper on the counter and get a pretty round shape that way. i also bake it on the paper, just grab a corner and slide it onto the peel, slide it off onto the stone and then grab a corner and slide it back onto the peel when done. it works great and makes it much more manageable.

Thanks for y-our input. i will try this next time I make pizza. in the meantime, i am going to indulge in American Pie by Reinhart.

Not always necessary to throw. When rolling, only roll the center 3rd for 2-3 strokes. Continue to rotate 45 degrees frequently and you'll have a nice round in no time. Hope this helps!!

even ball
knead into a thick round crust
gently toss % twirl

Don't work it so fast.
Feel free to set the dough down for a time to recover its elasticity. That will help to keep from tearing it.
Also spend some time thinking about the ratio of your flours and how the gluten effects things.
Once you get good at making a pliable dough you can get to work as a crust through whatever means get a hold of me and i can show you the tricks to tossing. Learning to move it first in a vertical position rollign it across the backs of your fists is important, using gravty to do all your stretching rather than centrifugal force.