Walk into the cheese section and you’ll find two mozzarellas that look related but behave like different ingredients: the soft white balls floating in water, and the firm blocks in vacuum-sealed plastic. On pizza, fresh vs low-moisture mozzarella is one…
Ask what the best cheese for pizza is and most people say “mozzarella” without thinking twice. They’re not wrong — mozzarella earned its throne. But it’s only the very beginning. The difference between a good homemade pizza and a great…
St. Louis style pizza is the most polarizing pie in America — and its fiercely loyal hometown fans wouldn’t have it any other way. The crust is a cracker: unleavened, rolled paper-thin, baked until it shatters. The cheese is Provel,…
In Rome, pizza isn’t round. It’s rectangular, sold from towering glass cases in bakeries and tiny storefronts called pizzerie al taglio, cut to whatever size you point at, weighed, priced by the etto (100 grams), reheated until the bottom crackles,…
Sicilian pizza is the original thick square pie — a slab of airy, olive-oil-rich dough with a golden fried bottom, a thin layer of cheese tucked underneath a bright, oregano-heavy tomato sauce. Its ancestor, sfincione, has been sold as street…
Detroit style pizza is the square pie with the caramelized cheese crown. Baked in a deep rectangular steel pan, it has a thick, airy, focaccia-like crust with a fried, golden bottom, a wall of cheese baked right against the pan…
Chicago deep dish pizza is less a pizza and more an event. Where most pizzas are flatbreads with toppings, a real Chicago deep dish is a tall, buttery pie with a crisp, biscuit-like crust, a pound or more of low-moisture…
New York style pizza is the world’s most imitated pizza and, to millions of people, simply what “pizza” means in its purest, most iconic form: a large, thin, hand-tossed round with a crisp-yet-pliable crust, a tangy tomato sauce, a blanket…
Neapolitan pizza is the ancestor of every pizza you have ever eaten — and in many ways, still the pinnacle. Born in Naples, Italy, it is defined by a soft, pillowy crust with a puffy, leopard-spotted rim, a thin soupy…
Every pizza maker, from first-timer to veteran, has stood over a bowl of misbehaving dough and wondered what went wrong. The dough is too sticky. Or too dry. It will not rise, or it rose too much. It tears when…
A crispy pizza crust is not luck — it is physics, and once you understand the physics behind how to get crispy pizza crust, you can get it on demand in an ordinary home oven. Crispness happens when three things…
Whole wheat pizza dough has a reputation problem. Too many people have bitten into a “healthy” pizza with a crust like a doorstop — dense, bitter, and dry — and concluded that whole wheat and pizza simply do not mix.…
Most gluten free pizza dough fails for one reason: it tries to imitate wheat dough instead of working with what gluten-free flours actually do. Without gluten — the elastic protein network that gives wheat dough its stretch, strength, and chew…
The thin crust vs thick crust debate is really a debate about dough. The same flour, water, yeast, and salt can become a shattering Roman cracker or a pillowy Sicilian slab depending on how the dough is formulated, fermented, and…
Knowing how to freeze pizza dough is the closest thing to a superpower in home pizza making. It means fresh, properly fermented dough is always one thaw away — no last-minute mixing, no waiting two hours for a rise on…
Few moments in the kitchen are as deflating as checking on your pizza dough and finding it exactly where you left it — a dense, sullen lump instead of the puffy, airy ball you were promised. If you’re facing pizza…
Learning how to stretch pizza dough is the skill that separates a decent homemade pizza from a great one. You can nail the recipe, ferment the dough for three days, and heat your oven until it glows — but if…
Every pizza dough recipe is secretly a math problem, and the most important number in it is hydration — the weight of water expressed as a percentage of the weight of flour. Pizza dough hydration determines whether your crust bakes…
Walk into the flour aisle with pizza on your mind and you will face a wall of bags all claiming to be the answer: “00” pizza flour in the elegant Italian packaging, bread flour promising chew, all-purpose flour you already…
If you keep a sourdough starter alive for bread, you are sitting on one of the finest pizza doughs imaginable — you just might not know it yet. Sourdough pizza dough trades commercial yeast for your starter’s wild yeast and…
Sometimes pizza can’t wait. The craving hits at 4 PM, dinner needs to happen by 6:30, and there is no time for an overnight rest — let alone a 72-hour cold ferment. This same day pizza dough recipe is engineered…
