I’ve been doing this for a while, but it’s a problem I’ve never solved. Dunno if it’s my crust recipe or something I need to do during construction.
The recipe is as follows:
- 1c water, 120°F
- 1 packet dry active yeast (2.25tsp)
- 1Tbsp granulated sugar
- 2Tbsp olive oil
- 3.5C white flour
- 1tsp salt
- Mix the yeast and sugar in the warm water, wait to bloom
- Add everything else and mix into dough.
- Knead, proof
- Roll out, transfer to pan
- Second proof (optional)
- Preheat oven to 425°F
- Construct pizza with favorite toppings
- Bake at 425°F for 15min or until cheese is sufficiently browned
Step 7 usually has jarred marinara, meats (except pepperoni), spices, and cheese, and all the veggies (and pepperoni) go on top.
Still, the very middle part of the pizza ends up a little doughy, just where the sauce meets the crust. The outside of the pizza is just fine, but the only thing I can think is that the sauce is adding too much water. Do I need to add a layer of oil before the sauce, or should I try to reduce the sauce before adding it? Should I reduce the temp and increase the time?
Thanks!
Edit: Everyone has had some great ideas. I’ll have plenty to try!
Lots of good advice in this thread, here’s one more that I discovered: spread the sauce thinner in the center of the pie. As the pie cooks the fluids will often pool in the center, so intentionally leaving the middle dry-ish can help compensate for that. I like my pizza really saucy, but I’ll leave the center barely wet with sauce, and that’s fine because it’s only the first couple bites of the slice anyway.
Also just mind the fluids you top the pizza with. If you’re doing pepperoni, then you really don’t need olive oil on top of that.
Good points!
425 is a little low. Pizza is all about heat, I pre-bake my crust for 7 at 450 to firm crust, then add sauce, cheese and toppings. Like many others said, a pizza stone is a huge help.
The olive oil might be causing it to become too doughy. You don’t need it (or the sugar). Both are for taste and texture. You’ll likely need to fiddle with the water if you lose the oil.
I’d also recommend measuring by weight and not volume. It’s more accurate. Buy yourself some cheap kitchen scales.
Got a kitchen scale, so all good there!
A lot of people have mentioned getting a pizza stone or steel and cooking at higher temps, and they’re 100% right.
I just want to add that steel is definitely the way to go if it’s in the budget - specifically, steel has more thermal mass and conducts heat better than stone.
Crust crispness is entirely a function of how much heat you’re able to supply to the surface, and when baking in a standard oven (max ~500F) instead of a pizza oven (700+ F), you need all the help you can get - which means steel, preferably at least 1/4" thick.
Sticking with the tools you have, you can try preheating your pan, like you would a stone/steel, before putting the topped pizza on it.
Don’t forget to preheat the steel on max temp for about an hour or so
Thanks for the advice! I had a stone once, but it cracked (from heat), and I just never replaced it. A pizza steel is something new I’d never heard of until people mentioned it in the comments, so I’ll have to look into that.
I have a double-layered, perforated pan that’s maybe 16ga altogether, but I can try preheating that.
For sure look into the pizza steel.
Stones often crack not because of heat specifically, but because of moisture.
They should really only ever be exposed to moisture once fully heated, and allowed a little extra time after the pizza bakes to dry out before turning the oven off.
A pizza steel will be more resilient, though it can rust if washed regularly without seasoning (just like a cast iron / carbon steel pan)
A big oven safe pan is a good start, the heavier the better.
I’ve never eaten good pizza out of a household oven, so I’ve bought an electric pizza oven for 200 Eur.
By weight I use 60% of water compared to the flour (i. e. 500g of high protein pizza flour to 300g of water), 7g of salt and a very low amount of dry yeast. Overnight proofing in the fridge, next day I ball the dough (around 270g per pizza) and let it proof at room temp for a few hours.
Baking 3 minutes at 400°C (740F)
The investment for the oven has well paid off, as I don’t order any pizza to my home, anymore. You can freeze dough balls or use more yeast for “same day dough”.
Edit: Ah what nobody mentioned in the other comments (I think): The choice of flour makes a huuuuuge difference. Use pizza flour or at least a high protein flour (which has at least 12% of protein)
You could get pretty good results with a pizza steel. Crank the oven to max and preheat the steel for about an hour. Then you get 2 pizzas with leoparding on the bortom. After that the heat in the steel is gone and they do not turn out so great anymore.
Also depends a lot on the oven. Incidentially today I bought a (used) new one (after I found it in local listings for 50 Eur - and sold off my old one for 30 Eur).
The old one goes to 260C, the new one gets to 300C. No way to make decent pizza in the old one (I tried) , but with the new one and a steel I’d have a chance.
The choice of flour makes a huuuuuge difference. Use pizza flour or at least a high protein flour (which has at least 12% of protein)
I’m with you, here. I sometimes do a 1:3 whole wheat to white all-purpose flour. However, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of pizza flour or high protein flour (that isn’t terrible for baking bread, anyway). What kind/brand do you use? I might be able to find an equivalent.
And thanks for sharing the weights you use. My recipe is a family one, and I should probably take some time to convert mine. Might help me find where extra water is coming from.
I’m German so I have good access to Italian flour, for Pizza I use Caputo Pizzeria (for which I pay Eur 2.50 per kg). I order a few packages online.
Typical supermarket flour here has a lower protein content - so it can hold less water.
The Caputo is about 3 times the price of supermarket flour, but 1kg of flour is 6 (round) pizzas, so the difference is a few cent per pizza.
Check youtube for good information - damn, I forget the name of the channel, it’s a married couple showing Italian cuisine , he’s American she’s Italian. They have a video how they make the rectangular pizza in the household oven.
This is crazy, chatgpt just found what I was looking for from roughly the above description:
https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/authentic-italian-pan-pizza-in-teglia-recipe
A pizza stone.
A stone or steel and higher temperature+less time will help immensely. Even a preheated cast iron pan would help. (Look at specific cast iron pizza instructions, I haven’t made any)
I tend to do 500f for 6-7 minutes on a baking steel and even heavier toppings are good.
Also: what toppings? Uncooked mushrooms and pineapple are super wet, cooking them beforehand is important.
I always cook the mushrooms first with soy sauce and red pepper flakes. Cook them down and toss them so they’re well coated and the water is all reduced off. Six or seven minutes while we roll out the dough.
Tip; cook mushrooms covered until they release their water. Steam them hard for like 5 mins. They’ll shrink and squeeze out their moisture. Don’t use oil, they just absorb it. Then reduce the liquid.
Yes, mushrooms are often in the sauce layer. I had no idea they had so much moisture. They don’t seem wet, like a green pepper or fresh tomato, so I just stuck them in there!
This right here, pre-heat the pan/stone and you’ll get a better crust. I’m presuming you’re not making the crust too thick.
100%. Get one OP, especially if you’re going through the work of making your own dough
Used to have one, I just never replaced it when it cracked. Times were tighter back then!
They can be had for pretty cheap, really, but I prefer putting my fresh made pizzas in a cast iron skillet.
Go one tier lower from the middle rack of the oven and cook at 450 instead of 425. Make sure your pizza stone or skillet is pre heated and fully up to temp with the oven before putting in the crust you made (like, pull out the skillet from the oven, set the crust in and put back in oven.). Put a fair amount of butter or olive oil in a skillet just before laying in the dough.
Don’t use the convection setting on your oven. You want the heat to rise from under the skillet/stone. It’s also why you go to a lower rack than the middle. It gets the bottom hotter and more crispy faster.
Obviously, you’ll have to adjust your times a bit for when to put in the sauce and toppings.
A great part about using a skillet is that not only will it cook similar to a stone, the ability to add butter and oil to the bottom really adds to the crisp texture of the bottom of the crust, and if you pull out out of the oven because your toppings are all done, but you find the crust still isn’t quite crispy enough or not quite done as you’d like, you can cook it a bit more on the stove top. Your pizza game will be 200% better. I’m a huge lover of non thin crust crispy crusted pizzas and I’ve been using a stone for frozen pizzas and a skillet for my fresh made pizzas for the past 20 years.
This and I went through a couple till I got a decent one and thankfully didn’t cost much. King Arthur flour has a nice one at a decent price.
have you got a cast iron pan? if it’s still soggy, cook it longer or use a less wet sauce.
Dude, I love serious eats and miss Alton brown. Thanks for this link.
Everyone is right- you need a stone.
Parchment paper on the stone for the first ~5 minutes gets a crisp crust without spilling corn meal everywhere.
but i like the cornmeal
But do you like the mess?
oh no i’ll have to sweep the floors and clean the counters like i was already going to do
I do love to use parchment paper…
Pizza stone or steel is gonna be your friend here. Let that stone get nice and hot before you put the pizza on it (probably going to want to get a pizza peel too, personally I like a 2 peel system, I build my pizza on a wooden peel, I feel like the raw pizza slides off better, and pull it out with a metal peel which is thinner and easier to slide under the pie)
EDIT: for a little explanation, the idea with pizza stones/steels or brick ovens is that the surface you’re putting the pizza on is ripping hot, and heat is going to transfer from that hot surface to the crust much more efficiently through conduction than it would on a tray in an oven rack where most of the heating is happening though convection of the hot air inside and radiation from the heating elements/burners. The stone/steel/bricks are hefty and have a lot of thermal mass so there’s a lot of heat there that can transfer directly to the pizza dough, cooking it fast and getting it nice and crisp. This is also the same idea as making it in a preheated cast iron pan that someone else mentioned. Depending on the size, if you have a nice heavy griddle that would probably also work well too in place of a steel or stone. You might get some improvement preheating a baking sheet and making your pizza on that, but there’s going to be a lot less mass there so it’s going to lose its heat much faster.
If your stone and oven can do it, also consider cranking up the temperature even higher, pizza ovens cook at pretty high temperatures, 500-700 degrees or even higher aren’t unheard of. A dedicated pizza oven is amazing if you have the space/budget for one. I have a breville pizzaillo (nice oven, probably not worth the price, I got it on a very steep discount) and it can go up to about 700 degrees, I don’t usually go quite that high but I definitely set it way higher than my normal oven goes, and it cranks a pizza out in like 2 minutes.
Before I got that, I also had pretty good luck with a pizza stone on my grill, grills can also reach pretty ludicrous temperatures. I think I’ve also seen some dedicated pizza oven accessories come out in recent years meant to go on a regular grill. I haven’t tried those myself, but they sound like a solid idea in theory.
Most jarred marinara sauce is probably a bit too wet for pizza use, you may want to try a pizza-specific sauce or make your own, or else maybe try cooking your sauce down a bit or maybe straining it depending on how watery/chunky it is.
Also be aware of what toppings you’re adding that might be adding a lot of moisture and think about do what you can to minimize that. Fresh mozzarella should be used sparingly for things like a margarita pizza, for regular pizza use you want to use low moisture mozz (or a blend of other cheeses if that’s your thing.) Mushrooms have a lot of moisture in them and that’s often not immediately obvious to a lot of people. Some ingredients are obviously wet like pineapple (I strongly recommend grilling your pineapple if you use it, drives out some of the moisture and also tastes great) a lot of veggies have a lot of moisture and might benefit from a quick roast or saute first to dry them out a little.
You can also consider doing a red top pizza with the cheese under the sauce to act as sort of a moisture barrier. There’s a couple places around the Philly suburbs I’ve been to that do a spiral of (usually very sweet) sauce over top of the cheese, which looks very cool if nothing else, or perhaps a layer of cheese, then sauce, then more cheese if you don’t like that look
And try to avoid going too heavy on the sauce/cheese/toppings, you can definitely ever load a pizza doing that.
“all the veggies” bring all the moisture. Cut back or precook the wet stuff. Go easy on the sauce.
I agree. Since I usually make the sauce myself, if I don’t cook it long enough, it may lead to moist crust. But it rarely happens anymore. Same for the toppings.
Heat input is #1 as others have said, but moisture reduction is #2. Make your crust thinner and use fewer toppings or plan to bake that mofo for an hour at a lower temperature.
Ideally any veggie is used sparingly if at all. Browning and cook quality are better if it’s only meat, cheese, and a bit of sauce.
Go easy on the sauce.
Only as a last resort. I’m pretty sure my SO would cook me alive, otherwise!
I am sure the serious foodies will downvote this comment but I precook the crust to prevent this. Roll out the dough and put it in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 then remove. Then just finish the pizza as you normally would.
I also do this, with a pizza steel, at the highest temperature the oven will go.
I’m something of foodie and I agree with this. Also use less sauce, spread the sauce thinner, or find a sauce that has less water in it. It’s the unevaporated liquid in the sauce that insulates the dough on top and keeps that surface from baking properly, making it mushy. Par-baking the crust starts that baking process before you put the ingredients on and helps to avoid this.
Lots of thickly cut toppings with liquid in them such as tomatoes or improperly dried fresh mozzarella can also prevent the crust from baking properly so par-bake and then add the ingredients before finishing the baking to help with this. Good pizza takes work but you’re on your way to it.
Some people also mentioned mushrooms as a source of moisture, and I put fresh ones in the sauce layer (I forgot that exception). I never really thought of them as particularly “wet.”
But perhaps doing a par-baking step is warranted. You do it for pies, and what is a pizza, if not a pie?
I like thicker crispy crusts and heavily sauced. I’ve pre-cooked my dough before adding sauce and toppings for decades.
Sounds like a winning combination to me. Thick crust is what my SO and I like, and we judge takeout pizza on the crust quality 😆
It adds steps and what do foodies love more than a plethora of steps?
Hotter oven. I go with 500F on a steel. 5 minutes on Bake, then Broil until the top looks good.
Broil?? That’s crazy, do you not get underdone crust and the cheese separating?
Less sauce, and more heat. Dont cook it on a metal pan, get a stone or steel. Crank your oven up as high as it can go, and heat for 20-30m before putting the pizza in.
Also, marinara, especially the jarred kind, is not a sub for pizza sauce as there is way too much liquid. Get pizza sauce, or check seriouseats for their sauce recipe as a starter.
Edit: also, 120F is too hot for proofing yeast as it will kill it. 80-100F is more ideal.
Instead of jar sauce, do 1 can tomato paste, 1 can tomato sauce or crushed tomato, 1tbsp Italian seasoning, 1tbsp garlic powder, salt and crushed red pepper to taste. Mix it all together before you make the dough and it should be pretty flavourful by the time you’re ready to cook. It’s easier than reducing the jar, and gives you more personalized flavor.
If that doesn’t reduce the water content enough, try adding just a touch more flour to the dough.
I like that idea. I’m all for personalization, and reducing the amount of heat needed for the whole process would be a blessing for where I live.
The simple option is pre-cook it a bit.
But also worth trying pizza sauce, as it usually has less water in it.
