On picky pizza-making instructions
I've posted several pizza recipes on my blog over the years, and two in particular have very precise equipment/method instructions.
(Those two recipes are the basic pizza crust recipe and the whole wheat pizza recipe.)
And sometimes readers are like, "Uhhh, Kristen, I think you are overcomplicating matters here."
I know there are lots of ways to make easy, quick pizza.
But I also know that there's lots of easy, quick, Very Not Good™ pizza out there.
And if you only know how to make forgettable/awful pizza, you are likely to opt for takeout pizza.
Or you'll make homemade pizza that no one wants to eat, which ends up being wasteful.
Now, I know not everyone is as picky about their food as I am. Which is totally ok! As long as you're eating what makes you happy, it's all good.
But I posted the two detailed pizza recipes precisely because I know there are a lot of people out there who are unhappy with their homemade pizza.*
And I was one of them until I learned a thing or two about ingredients and methods.
*I actually posted the whole wheat pizza recipe because my friend Stacy messaged me letting me know that her homemade whole wheat pizza was rather awful. As in, her family didn't want to eat it!
If you're happy with your current pizza situation (whether it's making an easy version or buying pizza), then just ignore all of my specific directions and carry on like the boss you are.
But if you're feeling like your homemade pizza is meh or worse, the stuff I posted is for you because there are common pizza-making problems that are fixable.
(For instance, learning that you need to preheat your pizza stone at 500&° for an hour was a huge revelation to me, and it made my pizza so much better than the flabby stuff I was turning out before. Your pizza is only going to be so good if you bake it in a 350° oven!)
Anyway, once you get the hang of the fixes, it's not actually all that hard.
It's kind of like yogurt-making. It feels SO complicated at first, but once you've done it a few times, you can go on auto-pilot.
Pizza Recipes
If you're feeling inspired to give this a try, here are some recipes to get you started.
Pizza Bagels
(easy and quick; not as good as homemade pizza, but great for hot summer days)
French Bread Pizza
(same deal as pizza bagels!)
Basic Homemade Pizza
This is the regular ol' pizza crust recipe that I use, along with lots of tips for making your pizza better.
Whole Wheat Pizza
It's 60% whole wheat, and you get to make the dough the day before, which can be super convenient on a busy day. And it's pretty tasty! I was surprised at how non-offensive the whole wheat ended up being.
Geez. I am so wordy once you put me in front of a keyboard. I thought I'd write just a thing or two about pizza making and here I am, over 500 words later.
Happy (500°, baked on a stone, made with King Arthur bread flour) pizza-making, friends. 😉
P.S. In case you were wondering, I did some detailed calculations on the cost of homemade pizza vs. takeout.
I occasionally make homemade pizza. Preheating the stone to 500 I guess replicates a real pizza oven so I will be trying that. We loves French bread pizzas. I let my kids add there own topping for fun. I haven't tried the bagel pizza. I bet it would be delicious since the crust would be a bit chewy. I am terribly wordy. I go through and eliminate words and am still too wordy, oh well. I put a feature in my Thursday's Thrifty Three series on some bunnies I got from Sonia if you want to take a look. It's at the bottom if you want to skip the post.
I like very thin crust homemade pizza. I don't have a pizza stone, but have thought about getting one. It's that hour at 500 degrees that gets me. In Florida, that would sure make our house hot....could there be any other way?
What about on the grill?
Grilled pizza is very good, but it takes some practice to get the crust cooked and not charred. I am still working on my technique.
I buy flour tortillas at my local health food store and we use those for thin crust pizza. It's not quite the same as making your own, but it is pretty darn easy. You can cook them in a cast iron skillet or toaster oven. I'm also in Florida and I just refuse to make pizza dough in the summer because of the heat.
That sounds like a plan. I sometimes make my own tortillas, so it would actually be homemade, too. I could use my cast iron pan.
We also love tortilla pizzas. I have found that the "fluffy" torillas make a much better base than the regular. Though, Mission only sells the "fluffy" in the smaller size, so we just get two personal pizzas each.
My friends have a portable, wood pellet-fueled, pizza oven. Once they figured out it how to use the wood pellets, it was Da Bomb. It's also $300 on Amazon.
I, too, have hesitations about the 500F for 1 hr. I can't get around the feeling that that's a waste of fuel. Nor do I have anything that I bake regularly, that I could bake while the oven preheats.
I know that was about pizza but literally ... this has the best message in general about life. Lol!
"If you’re happy with your current pizza situation"
That's right boo, you do you. Lololol.
Ha!! I love this. My husband is extremely particular with his homemade pizza (which tastes like takeout now that we have a system down). I get it! I've had a lot of gross homemade pizza (not for a while, though!).
BTW our best pizzas are made at 550° when we had a magical oven that went that high. We are thinking of trying the pizza steel since our oven doesn't go to 550° anymore and the 500° isn't as good. I second the King Arthur Flour, too!
That whole wheat pizza recipe you posted would have scared me off ever trying to make whole wheat—all that time and effort and it’s not even 100% WW? If I didn’t know there were way less fussy recipes out there specific to whole wheat I would have just thought to myself it was impossible like making homemade lasagna (which can be done and is delicious but takes an entire day using the America’s test kitchen recipe).
So I see your point but I also think there’s something to be said for not scaring people off and trying things that are 80% as good (or maybe 100% as good) but take 20% of the time. Since time and effort is why we order out (and I’m not supposed to be eating refined grains).
I usually buy the frozen pizza from the grocery store. I've never made one at home before.
But I know that following the recipe is always a good idea if our own recipe doesn't meet our expectations. I think it's great you share your secret sauce. The reader can just choose whether to incorporate it or not 🙂
And in the vein of pizza bagel or french bread pizza, we do english muffin pizza once in a while.
Do you cook 2 pizza
Oops. Do you cook two pizzas in the oven at the same time?
Nope, I do them one at a time. Two at a time messes with air circulation in the oven, I find, and the pizza suffers as a result. I get uneven browning.
Thanks.
I loooove me some garlic bread pizza. 🙂 It's a good "emergency" dinner on weeknights, as long as you keep all the ingredients on hand. Hubs is SO finicky about pizza crusts that I'm happier to pay for a mega pack of frozen pizzas from Costco. I know homemade is better and cheaper, but sometimes you just can't please Picky eaters.
I've been known to cheat and buy dough at the grocery store. I know it's just flour, water, salt and yeast but sometimes I'm in a hurry.
King Arthur's Sir Lancelot Hi-Gluten flour works great for pizza dough but unless you can find it at a restaurant supply or you're like me and can drive to KAF in a daytrip, well it's not really that much better than just using KAF bread flour.
It's the foods with the few, simple ingredients that tend to be the hardest to do right. Few ingredients = no place to hide. Compare a "simple" french omelete to a "complicated" chicken stew.
Just for clarification: The pizza bakes on the parchment paper? Thanks!
Yes indeed!
Bah, I love homemade pizza, but I've been trying to not eat it too much to watch my waistline! Fortunately I love cooking, so I'm willing to spend the extra time to make the crust just right, but it took a few failed attempts first.
Thanks for the inspiration! I made a batch of your wholewheat flour pizza dough this morning. I really like the idea of thinking ahead for tomorrow, and it only took a couple of minutes. I will look forward to that pizza and tomorrow's prep will be quite quick since the dough will be already to go! Thinking ahead and doing some prep work is the secret to spending less for a lot of things. When I have to do something last minute, I usually spend more.
Have you tried Bobs Red Mill Artisan Bread flour? Not all stores have it but I live in a small town and am able to find it. It has a pizza recipe on the bag called perfect pizza crust that is so easy. It bakes at 500 degrees on parchament. It says baking sheets but I use a pizza stone. I make the crust about as thin as I can get it ( for hubby’s diabetic carb counting). Closest recipe to a wood fired pizza I have ever made!
I've never made an actual pizza, but your tips have made my knock-off quick pizza-like creations much, much better. I have to watch my carbs, so I make pizza using a low-carb tortilla for crust. And I'm WAY too cheap to invest in a pizza stone... But I do own a cast iron skillet. So I cook my pizza on a dry skillet sprinkled with corn meal. I pre heat the skillet to 450 (just until the oven beeps), but since the crust is very thin and pre-cooked, it works just fine. It's not the chewy, carb-loaded yumminess of real pizza, but it is a much more acceptable alternative than anything I tried before!
I am soooo grateful for your pizza baking posts! I was endlessly frustrated with my soggy floppy pizza at home from other recipes. After reading your post Santa got me a pizza stone for Christmas and it has taken homemade pizza to another level! Almost as good as takeout and makes it actually worth the work. Plus it cooks super quick. Few blog posts make as big a difference in your day to day life as your pizza post has.
I don't have a stone, had one never used it, but I do have a pizza pan with holes in it (think TJ Maxx or even Aldi on occasion), not solid and we use it all the time and have for 20 years. We LOVE homemade pizza, calzones, pizza rolls, breadsticks, anything like that, bready yummy goodness!
I think someone who puts out beautiful looking pizzas pretty much every Friday night is entitled to spill over into 500+ words, particularly if the pizza tastes as good as it looks. And I'm grateful for the parchment paper news -- I figured it would burn down my house which would make the per-pizza cost a little prohibitive and would make my insurance agent a little testy. I think I just might make pizza tomorrow night with the pizza stone I got 8 years ago and have never used (yep, that's true). Thanks, Kristin!
OMG. A person's name is the most important thing to get right. That's Kristen with an "E." My apologies!
It’s more along the lines of an “heirloom” investment, but a pizza steel will even take the stone up a notch. And it doesn’t crack like my stones have also done. They say it gets to like 800 degrees or something crazy like the pros’ ovens. I would only advise against the thickest one which is literally 20-25 pounds!
Do you use any special kind of parchment paper? I would love to do this but my husband is convinced that the parchment paper will start burning since the boxes usually say you can only use it at temperatures up to 400F.
I just use regular parchment paper, and you're right, the package does advise against temps above 400 or so. But (and do not take this as advice!), I do it all the time and nothing has ever caught on fire.
You really just need the parchment for sliding the pizza on the stone, and after a few minutes, it's not too hard to just pull the parchment out from under the pizza (I use a spatula to hold the pizza in place and then gently pull the paper out). Once the pizza has baked for a few minutes, it's dry enough to allow the parchment to come out easily.