Baking pizza it's all about timing: You need to make sure the bottom, edges, and top of the pizza all bake at an even pace so that when your cheese is 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 can remain pale and flaky. 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 browned on the bottom comes down to the surface you bake it on. As Andrew Janjigian explains in his how-to post transform your home oven into a pizza oven, this is about conduction: the direct transfer of energy from one object to another. To maximize conductivity, you want to bake your pie in a material with sufficient thermal mass, which refers to a material's heat storage (and dissipation) capacity. The more thermal mass, the more heat can be delivered to the bottom of your pizza; the more heat it distributes, the more it will brown, allowing it to cook 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.
Christina's dough
The recommended option is a baking steel, that most home pizza bakers prefer. A baking steel has a significant thermal mass, plus it excels in an additional 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. Be sure to preheat the steel for an hour before baking your pizza so that it is most effective.
The second option is a baking stone (also called a bread and pizza stone), which has the thermal mass of an annealing steel, but is made of cordierite, not steel, and thus does not have the same thermal conductivity. Preheat it fully – at least an hour before baking – and it will still be able to deliver a significant burst of heat to the bottom of your crust, enabling it to brown at a good rate.
If you don't have a steel or baking stone, you can bake your pizza on one preheated half foil pan. By preheating, the pan absorbs the heat, allowing it to send it to the bottom of your pizza when the dough is placed on top. But because the sheet pan is thin, it has a small amount of thermal mass and can only retain a limited amount of heat, and once the raw pizza is placed on top, it will cool quickly.
Food photography and styling by Liz Neily
Bake your pizza crust
You can also give your crust a little kick-start: instead of tossing in raw dough and sliding it into the oven, bake your topless pizza crust for a few minutes—just until it's pale and matte, with a little very light browning on edges. (Ours Pizza crust the recipe includes this step and recommends baking at 450°F for 8 minutes for thinner crust pizzas; about 10 to 12 minutes for medium thickness; and 12 to 14 minutes for thick-crust pizza.)
Once the crust looks set and set, slide it out of the oven, add the sauce, cheese and toppings, then return to the oven to finish baking, about 10 to 15 minutes on the top rack of the oven. (You can also bake the crust for a minute or so when baking in a pizza oven like one Crocodile.)
Then get ready to serve and enjoy – for perfect slices, we suggest this fun pizza rocker or these useful pizza scissors.
Load your pizza into the oven like a pro with these tips from King Arthur's baker Martin Philip:
Cover photo by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
