Baking pizza is all about timing: You need to ensure the bottom, edges, and top of the pizza all bake at an even rate, so that by the time your cheese has melted to perfection, the crust is crispy. But balancing these three elements can be challenging. Typically, the top of your pizza — the cheese and any toppings — bubbles and browns at a faster rate than the bottom of the crust, which may remain pale and flabby. If you’re having trouble getting a crispy crust on the bottom of your pizza, try these tips.
Pizza crust not getting crisp and brown? Bake on the right surface.
Getting your pizza to brown on the bottom comes down to the surface that you bake it on. As Andrew Janjigian explains in his post on how to transform your home oven into a pizza oven, this is all about conduction: the direct transfer of energy from one object to another. To maximize conduction, you want to bake your pie on a material with sufficient thermal mass, which refers to the heat-storing (and delivering) capacity of a material. The more thermal mass, the more heat can be delivered to the underside of your pizza; the more heat delivered, the more it will brown, allowing it to bake at the same rate as the top and sides of the pizza.
Andrew notes that “thermal mass is directly related to the density and weight of the surface material in question — denser and heavier is better, provided it has been preheated.” There are three options we recommend for home ovens, ranging from the most effective to the simplest.
The recommended option is a baking steel,which most home pizza bakers prefer. A baking steel has significant thermal mass, plus it excels in an extra category: thermal conductivity. In other words, it can store a lot of heat and then transfer that heat to the bottom of the pizza quickly because it’s made of metal, which is an excellent conductor. Make sure to preheat the steel for an hour before baking your pizza so that it’s most effective.
The second option is a baking stone(also called a bread and pizza stone), which has the thermal mass of a baking steel but is made from cordierite, not steel, and thus does not have the same thermal conductivity. Preheat it thoroughly — at least an hour before baking — and it will still be able to deliver a significant blast of heat to the bottom of your crust, enabling it to brown at a nice rate.
If you don’t have a baking steel or stone, you can bake your pizza on a preheatedmetal half-sheet pan. By preheating, the pan absorbs heat, allowing it to deliver it to the bottom of your pizza when the dough is placed on top. But because the sheet pan is thin, it has a low amount of thermal mass and can only store a limited amount of heat, and once the raw pizza is placed on top, it will quickly cool.
You can also give your crust a little head start: Instead of topping the raw dough and sliding into the oven, parbake your un-topped pizza crust for several minutes — just until it’s pale and matte, with some very slight browning at the edges. (Our Pizza Crust recipe includes this step, and recommends baking at 450°F for 8 minutes for thinner-crust pizza; about 10 to 12 minutes for medium thickness; and 12 to 14 minutes for thick-crust pizza.)
Once the crust looks and feels set on top, slide it out of the oven, add your sauce, cheese, and toppings, then place it back in the oven to finish baking, about 10 to 15 minutes on the upper oven rack. (You can also parbake crust for a minute or so when baking in a pizza oven like an Ooni.)
Then get ready to serve and enjoy — for picture-perfect slices, we suggest this fun pizza rocker or these handy pizza scissors.
Load your pizza in the oven like a pro with these tips from King Arthur baker Martin Philip:
Cover photo by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
A baking steel helps the underside of your pizza brown and crisp to perfection. The recommended option is a baking steel, which most home pizza bakers prefer. A baking steel has significant thermal mass, plus it excels in an extra category: thermal conductivity.
When building a pan pizza, it's important to apply a liberal coating of olive oil to the bottom of the cold pan before adding your dough. This not only prevents sticking, but further helps the caramelization of the bottom crust, creating that delicious crunch.
Pizza requires a very high oven temperature to get a puffy, crispy crust, with golden cheese and cooked toppings. Be sure to let the oven pre-heat for sufficient time to reach its peak temperature. At least half an hour is a good amount of time.
Palm down, slide your hands under dough and lifting carefully place on to a hot pizza stone. Bake at 500°F for 4 minutes. Remove from oven and top with your favorite toppings (don't go too crazy with the toppings, a little goes a long way). Return to oven for 6-8 minutes.
Before putting anything on the crust (sauce, cheese, toppings), cook the crust in the oven for 3-4 minutes. This will limit the amount of moisture on the crust allowing it to get a little more crispy. Also, since traditional ovens do not get as hot as pizza ovens, the dough needs more time to get crispy.
00 flour is finely ground Italian flour that contains about 12% protein, or 12% gluten. It's the traditional flour used to make Neapolitan-style pizza. Since its gluten content is similar to bread flour, it also produces a pizza crust with chew.
Select 325°F with the convection fan on if your oven has it. Place your slice or slices in the oven and start reheating for crispy crust, hot toppings, and melted cheese, between 5 and 8 minutes. Thin crust and fewer toppings take less time, so it's wise to check around the 4-minute mark to see where your pizza stands.
Adding oil to your pizza dough makes it crispier once baked. The oil creates an impermeable layer that moisture, such as that present in tomato sauce, cannot easily penetrate. In other words, olive oil in pizza dough prevents sauce from absorbing into the dough and making it floppy.
After many rounds of testing, I settled on a target oven temperature of 800°F for the dough and four topped pizza recipes that I developed. The slightly lower baking temperature is more forgiving, but still plenty hot enough to achieve a crisp undercarriage and leoparding on the crust.
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.
A nibbed pizza pan also speeds up the baking time for pizza dough and makes the crust crispier than a standard solid pan. Perforated Pizza Pan - A perforated pizza pan has holes that allow air and heat to hit the crust directly for a crispier crust. This pan style also makes baking times much shorter.
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).
To make your pizza base crispy,first,pop it into the oven,for 10 minutes ,or until cheese & topping are nice and golden and melted. Take a none stick,frying, heat a few tea spoons of ,sunflower old,make sure it covers all the pan,bring to heat,for 1 minute, place pizza in for two minutes, slide onto plate job done!
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.
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.
What's the difference? Well, a Pizza Crisper is made with holes in the bottom, which allows heat to circulate evenly and results in a crispy, crunchy crust. Pizza Pan, on the other hand, is solid with no holes, allowing heat to build up, resulting in a softer, doughier crust.
If you're baking the pizza in the oven, whether on a pizza stone or not, I always pre-bake the dough for 4-5 minutes before adding toppings, to make sure the pizza dough cooks crisp on the outside and soft and airy in the middle.
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