How I Make the Perfect Homemade Pizza Every Time

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Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

While I was a total pizza hater as a child, I've come around as an adult—maybe a little too far around. It's one of my favorite things to make at home. I use pizza as a vehicle for using up leftovers, and as a way to save money on lunch. Through years of pizza trials, I've collected some sure-fire tricks that ensure the best homemade pizza possible. Flavorful crusts, balanced toppings, and even browning—you don’t need to have a home kitchen outfitted with a giant stone kiln to reach pizza perfection. But you do need to know a few things.

Ferment the dough

When you have a meal with as few as three components, you want to ensure each one is bringing excellent flavor to the table. Crust may be humble, but it doesn’t have to be bland. The most reliable way to ensure your crust is flavorful is to build in a cold-fermentation period of 24 to 72 hours. Like a good sourdough bread, the flavors that develop during fermentation are what give the dough that characteristic tang.

Read here for the details on aging your dough in the fridge. This simple cold fermentation method is the easiest way to achieve a bubbly, chewy crust with lots of flavor.

Season the edge of your crust

The most abandoned pizza element is the outer crust ring, and there’s nothing sadder than seeing a plate with a bunch of bald, gnawed-on bread. But with all the flavor in the middle of the pie, no one can be blamed for jettisoning bland, dry carbs. Instead, make the crust a point of interest.

Since the outer ring of crust is essentially a colossal breadstick, think of the tastiest bread stick you’ve ever had and get inspired. Brush the crust with some olive oil, sprinkle on some salt and raid your spice cabinet. Read here for some crust-centric inspiration, like using garlic powder, sesame seeds, garam masala, or a thin layer of mayonnaise along the edge. Heck, you can even try this method and stuff your crust with hot dogs. Avoid dried herbs, however, as they may burn in the high-temperature oven.

Ditch the sheet pan for a pizza stone or steel

There’s a reason you see pizza advertised as “brick oven” and “wood fired.” The texture and flavor is best when cooked at high temperatures where humidity doesn’t stand a chance. The most indispensable tool in your pizza creator toolkit is a pizza stone or steel. Using either one is going to work considerably better than squishing your 72-hour fermented dough onto a thin metal sheet pan.

Using one of these surfaces is ideal for pizzas (and breads) because they can withstand extremely high temperatures and retain even heating for the duration of the cooking time. Both surfaces will vaporize moisture and leave you with that sought-after crispy, charred bottom.

Although it’s completely a matter of preference, the stone and steel each have a few unique qualities, and one might suit you better than the other. Read here to see the details on both and which one might be better for your needs. I’ve used both for pizza and I’ve never been disappointed.

Preheat the pan thoroughly

In order to get as close as possible to a wood-fired brick oven, make sure your home oven and the baking steel, stone, or cast iron skillet have had ample time to come to temperature. Preheat the oven with the skillet or stone inside for at least 20 minutes. These baking surfaces are thicker and more dense than sheet trays, so they take longer to heat up. Once they have had plenty of time in a 450℉ to 500℉ oven, the material will hold onto that heat even after you slide a cold pizza on top of it. Ensuring the surface is as hot as the rest of the oven will guarantee a crispy bottom crust and generous rise.

Use a pizza peel

You can craft the most flavorful dough and top it with premium toppings, but if you can’t get that pizza safely onto your baking stone without it crumpling into a heap, then you’ve only made a plate of disappointment for dinner. Just like a baseball player wouldn’t go up to bat with a broomstick, you shouldn’t be slingin’ pies with the wrong equipment. Get a pizza peel. A pizza peel is that wood or metal thing you've probably seen the staff at pizzerias use to slide the pie in and out of the oven.

Conceptually simple, a pizza peel is just a thin, flat, wide surface with a handle. You’ll want a peel that’s wide enough for the biggest pizza you think you’ll make (you can always make a smaller pizza, but you can’t go bigger). The handle makes controlling the peel easier and keeps your hands safe from the oven heat. For a home oven, choose one with a shorter handle, around 9 to 12 inches; those extra long handles are for deeper industrial ovens. They can be made of different materials, like wood or metal, but they function equally, so, batter’s choice. Be sure to transfer your finished pizza onto a cutting board for slicing to ensure the longevity of your peel.

Go light on the toppings

The best slices strike a balance–highlighting every ingredient without overloading the crust. Seems easy enough, but when you’re at home, faced with a naked circle of dough, it’s easy to get excited and black out. Once you finally come to, there are four cups of mushrooms and a ream of bacon drowning in Rao’s. Where did the dough even go?

It’s normal to be a toppings enthusiast—you want to make sure that every bite has every ingredient. Sadly, overloading the dough can lead to misfortune. For one thing, it can become too heavy for the yeast-leavened crust to rise to its potential. Lots of toppings, especially sauce, add to the moisture content and can lead to a soggy crust. Worst case scenario, heavy toppings with a lot of liquid can actually make your crust stick to the peel, causing your pizza to rip on its way into the oven.

The best solution is to use a light hand. A modest smear of sauce goes a long way, scatter your toppings mindfully, and don't forget to season the outer crust. You'd be surprised how these small choices make a perfectly balanced pie.

Use quality ingredients

Whether you’re dining out or cooking at home, pizza should be fun and affordable. I totally stand by cooking on a budget, but that is not the same thing as cooking with low-quality ingredients.

In order to make the best pizza, you should use ingredients that taste amazing because once the high oven heat evaporates the water away, those flavors are going to be more concentrated. When considering cost, remember that we’re going light on the toppings, so any ingredients you buy are probably going to stretch out for multiple meals. A fancy jar of sauce can be used for tonight’s pizza, tomorrow’s pasta, and Saturday’s shakshuka breakfast.

Go heavy on the cornmeal

The first few times I tackled a homemade pizza, they morphed into misshapen, broken piles with cheese and sauce burned onto my baking stone. The error was not enough cornmeal.

Although it’s not an ingredient many people consider when pondering pizza, it is one of the most important. Coarse ground cornmeal creates a barrier between the sticky pizza dough and the pizza peel, functioning like spilled marbles on the ground–anything on top of them is just gonna roll right off, creating a fluid transfer of pizza from the peel onto the hot baking surface. (Unless you're using a cast iron skillet, then you might want to frico cheese the bottom of your crust instead.)

Although you can use a few different ingredients for this purpose, cornmeal is the most widely used. Scatter a generous layer of cornmeal onto your pizza peel before you start stretching out your dough. Once you’ve stretched it to the desired size, place it on top of the cornmeal lined peel, grab the handle and give it a firm horizontal shake. The dough should slide freely. If it doesn’t, gently lift the dough, maybe use a bench scraper if it’s really stuck, and sprinkle some more cornmeal in there. Begin applying toppings, and as you go along, periodically stop and shake to make sure you’re not stuck.

Par-cook veggies and meats

Partially cooking certain toppings is what separates the “OK” home pizzas from the “you should open a pizzeria” home pizzas. Oh, and it can also prevent you from possibly eating undercooked meat.

Not all ingredients have to be par-cooked (cheese), but if you are a fan of sliced veggies, consider what happens when you put them on raw. Peppers, onions, mushrooms, and many other vegetables will become desiccated, shriveled and chewy in a 475℉ oven. Some vegetables, like tomatoes or zucchini carry excess moisture and will create a big puddle on your pie.

Sautéing watery vegetables briefly with oil and salt while your dough is proofing will ensure excess moisture comes out, and the coating of oil will prevent dryness occurring with other ingredients. Meats, on the other hand, aren’t in danger of drying out in the oven, but will release excess water and fat while cooking. Par-cooking bacon or sausage beforehand will allow you to control how much grease ends up on your pizza, while also ensuring the thicker cuts are completely cooked through.