6 Tips for Making Homemade Pizza (Thin Dough)

Homemade pizza like from a pizzeria? Is quite real. To make the perfect pizza in the most ordinary oven, it is important to remember the following:

1. The dough recipe is not so important, the sauce recipe and the type of filling are not so important as the baking temperature. Italian pizza is originally cooked in a wood-burning oven at a temperature of 450-550 C, no more than 1 minute, due to which it turns out to be crispy on the outside, with a thin elastic crust, it is not easy to simulate a wood-burning oven with such a high baking temperature at home, therefore such methods are used: preheat the oven to the maximum (250-300 C), instead of a baking sheet, use a special stone sheet, which is heated together with the oven. Pizza is baked on the stone for no longer than 10-15 minutes. Since I have no stone, I bake on a metal baking sheet, but at the highest temperature (250-300 C) in an oven very well preheated to this temperature. It takes 10-15 minutes to bake, depending on the size of the product. As soon as the sides of the dough are browned, and the cheese melts and begins to bubble, the pizza is ready. Take it out immediately! It is important not to overdry the pizza, this often happens if it is baked at medium temperatures (about 180 C) for a long time (20-30 minutes).
2. The pizza dough is made according to the simplest recipe for lean yeast dough with the addition of olive oil, the ascended dough is not crushed a second time but immediately stretched with the palms of the cake to the desired size. It is believed that the rolling pin destroys air bubbles in the dough, so it is not used. I still roll out the dough with a rolling pin, but I let the base “breathe” for about 20 minutes so that air bubbles inside again form.
3. To prevent the pizza base from becoming dry and greasy during baking, after rolling out the cake, place it on a baking sheet sprinkled with flour (you do not need to grease it with butter, only flour).
4. To prevent the base from becoming wet from excess moisture in the filling and sauce, after placing the dough in a baking sheet, first of all, grease the side on which you will spread the filling with olive oil, only then distribute the sauce and filling.
5. To make the pizza tasty and baked well in a short time, do not overload it with ingredients, distribute the cheese in slides at a short distance.
6. When baking pizzas in new modern ovens, use the oven manufacturer’s recommendations. See instructions. Why is it so important? Old ovens are almost always a little leaky and natural ventilation (convection) is provided during baking. In the old oven, it is enough to set the maximum heating temperature, warm up the oven itself well and the pizza turns out to be perfect – with dry crispy sides and a juicy cheese center. Furnace effect. Modern ovens are hermetically sealed and therefore with standard heating (classic heating top + bottom) moisture does not evaporate and the pizza turns out to be moist. The result is not at all the same. Therefore, I recommend using the mode for baking pizza, which is offered in the instructions for your oven, usually, it includes powerful heating + fan mode. I have such a mode called “Heating from below + ventilation heating” while the baking sheet should be placed not in the middle, but closer to the bottom of the oven. I set the temperature to 220C. The pizza turns out to be perfect, not wet, very tasty!