Crispy pizza at home: tips for the perfect crust (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a crispy pizza crust? ›

Bake the crust in the fully preheated oven for five minutes. This helps dry it out and prepares it for it's final crispy form. If you top it with everything first, it probably won't get enough heat and air exposure to fully crisp, so partially bake the crust and sauce first.

Also, since traditional ovens do not get as hot as pizza ovens, the dough needs more time to get crispy. Take the crust out of the oven and add the sauce, cheese, and toppings to the crust. Put the pizza back in the oven, cook for 3-4 minutes, turn the pizza 180 degrees, and cook another 3-4 minutes.

There are many tricks to achieving a tasty, homemade pizza dough that rises into a beautiful pizza crust, such as making sure your ingredients are at right temperature, using half bread flour for a stronger dough and half all-purpose flour for a nice rise, substituting honey for sugar to help caramelize the crust and ...

As you are rolling out and topping your first pizza, switch your oven to broil. Right before you launch, swtich your oven back to bake or convection bake 500F. The idea is to get your Steel even hotter than 500 F for this thin crust bake. It really helps crisp up that bottom.

FYI – A hot pizza stone is key to producing a well-browned, crisp bottom crust. So here are the three things to do to get the stone hot enough: place stone in the cold oven, set the temperature to 500 degrees, and let it preheat for one full hour. (I start the hour once it has preheated).

If you're keen to intensify its flavor even more, enhance the dough further – either with infused oil brushed over top, cheese woven into its edges or a combination of herbs and spices kneaded into it or sprinkled on it.

Don't let it rise for too long, though.

Though a long and slow rise is beneficial for flavor and texture, you can run into issues if you allow your pizza dough to rest for too long.

Set the oven to 375 degrees. Place the baking sheet in the oven while it preheats. When preheating is complete, place the cold pizza slices on the hot baking sheet and return it to the oven. Bake for 5 to 10 minutes.

The best oven temperature for pizza is between 450 and 500 degrees F (250 to 260 degrees C). Pizza ovens cook at temperatures between 800 and 900 degrees F. You can't get that hot in your home oven, but the higher you can go, the better. Place a pizza stone on a lower oven rack.

How do you make pizza edges crispy? ›

Pre-Bake. In a home oven, the trick to getting a crispy crust pizza is some pre-baking. This only takes about 8-10 minutes and is worth it for a crispy, crunchy crust. Simply fit the dough to your pizza pans, pick a couple of times to prevent air bubbles, and bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

In-home ovens do not get as hot as the ovens at pizza restaurants, and the stone or steel underneath the crust while baking helps make the best use of temperature. Always bake your pizza pie on the lowest rack in the oven. This allows your pizza crust to get closer to the heat source, allowing it to become more crispy.

Investing in a pizza stone is a game-changer. The stone distributes the heat evenly so the pizza cooks perfectly, but, most importantly, extracts moisture - which gives you that crispy crust.

Looking to make a basic pizza crust, one with a crispy bottom, a little bit of chew, and enough strength that the slices won't get floppy under all that sauce and cheese? For a no-fuss crust, you need a workhorse flour, and that's all-purpose flour.