Pizza has been a favourite American food for decades. Cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, Hawaiian pizza–no matter the toppings, pizzas are loved by nearly everyone. Pizza is often ordered in restaurants, and it’s not considered an easy meal to prepare at home.
Making pizza is a true art form. From selecting the right flour to knead the dough to choosing which topping combinations go well with your sauce, it’s a beautiful and delicious feat of art!
We’ve collected a lot of tips and tricks over the years to make the best pizza possible. You’ll learn everything you need about making the best pizza, from making it yourself to measuring the ingredients.
Dough
Stick to a Homemade Pizza Crust
The perfect pizza dough is the key to making the best homemade pizza. Homemade dough creates a crisp golden crust and has a great texture. Choosing the right flour for your needs is important when making pizza dough.
Ask yourself what type of crust you prefer: thin, thick, stuffed or gluten-free? You can narrow down which type of crust you want to make by narrowing your choices.
Artisan Bread Flour
The flour of choice for bakers! Our Artisan Unbleached bread flour is made with high-quality, high-protein flour from America’s finest wheat. It’s perfect for creating delicious pie crusts.
Gluten-Free Pizza Crust Mix
Our Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix makes a delicious crispy and chewy crust. Our premade mix makes it easy to create the perfect Gluten Free Pizza Dough from scratch. This mix can be used to make gluten-free pizza crusts up to 12 inches in diameter.
Let Your Dough Cool Before Baking
This is a crucial step in creating delicious, flavorful pizza crust. The fermentation process is slowed down by lowering the temperature of your dough. This is how the dough produces the delicious pizza crust flavor that we love. This will allow your dough’s flavor to develop fully. The yeast in the dough breaks down starches from the flour during this time. This allows the mixture create the gas and air pockets necessary to make a light, chewy crust.
While most homemade pizza recipes require at least an hour to ferment, traditional pizza dough can be left to ferment for several days. We recommend that you let your pizza dough ferment for at least 24 hours to get the best crust. You can also refrigerate your dough the day before you want to break it. This will allow you to spread out the process and save time so that you don’t have to spend too much time in the kitchen.
Do Not Stretch the Dough when It’s Cold
It is good to ferment your dough in the refrigerator, but it is better to stretch it right away. The cold temperatures cause the gluten in your flour to shrink and make pizza dough tighten. It is very difficult to stretch firm dough, but it usually springs back to its original shape. Cold dough can rise too much in the oven, resulting in a large crust even if you use a thin recipe.
Avoid problems with cold dough by removing it from the refrigerator and letting it rest at room temperature for at minimum an hour before you stretch and bake.
Don’t Over Knead
It can be difficult to know how long you should knead pizza dough dough if you want to create the best pizza dough. Although you want all the ingredients to be well mixed, you shouldn’t over-knead the dough. Your pizza crust will lose its light, airy texture if you over-knead it. Your thin pizza crust can look like bread after baking if you over-knead it. Over-kneaded dough will make it difficult to stretch. Instead of kneading your dough the 8 minutes most recipes require, knead it only for 3-5 minutes.
Hand Stretch Your Dough
Hand stretching your dough gives you greater control over the shape, thickness, and texture of your crusts. A rolling pin can create a thin, cracker-like crust. This is why it’s not recommended to learn how to make pizza dough. Because the dough is rolled out, it pulls all the air out of the dough creating a dense crust. They are difficult to handle and can’t take a variety toppings. Although you might not be able to create a perfect round pizza crust by hand stretching it, you can make a crust that is more texture.
Baking
Invest in a Pizza Stone
Have you ever wondered what makes pizza in authentic Italian restaurants so delicious? Heat is the answer. Most restaurants use heat above 800°F when cooking pizza. Although home ovens are not meant to heat up to this temperature, there are some tips and tricks that will make your oven a great pizza-making machine.
A baking stone, or pizza stone, is a surface for cooking that absorbs moisture and produces heat. A pizza stone can be used to make pizza by mimicking the heat of a traditional pizza oven. A pizza stone’s moisture-absorbing capabilities create a crispier crust. On the other hand, parchment paper or baking sheets will result in a crusty and often undercooked crust.
Preheating your oven is an essential step to making the best pizza dough, regardless of whether you are using a pizza pan or a pizza stone. Your oven will reach its maximum temperature if you heat it for a long time (for at least an hour). This will ensure that your dough is crispy and delicious, not undercooked and dry.
Choose Scales Over Volume
Baking is a science. When creating a scientific recipe, you wouldn’t add just a little bit of this or that. We don’t think so! Baking is no different. When making the best pizza, accuracy is key.
The four main ingredients for great pizza dough are flour, yeast water, salt, and water. Although measuring flour in cups or tablespoons is the fastest way to measure it, it can be inaccurate. Because flour is easily compressed, it can make your recipe inaccurate by a few ounces.
We recommend that you use a scale to measure each ingredient (yeast, salt included!). This will ensure you are adding exactly the right amount to each ingredient.
Don’t Remove Your Pizza Too Early
A rookie mistake. A rookie mistake. Although no one wants to eat overcooked or burned pizza, uncooked and undercooked pizza can be very disappointing. You can leave your pizza in the oven for a few more minutes after it is baked. This will increase the flavor and allow the crust to brown. Toast the cheese until it is melted.
