Dough 10 min read
W-Value and P/L Ratio: Reading Italian Flour Specs
Protein percentage is the metric American bakers know. It's printed on every bag, discussed in every recipe, and used as shorthand for flour strength....
Dough 11 min read
Sourdough Pizza Dough: Adapting Your Starter for Pizza
If you maintain a sourdough starter for bread, you already have the most powerful flavor tool available for pizza dough. Sourdough pizza produces a...
Styles 9 min read
Sicilian Pizza vs. Grandma Pizza: What's the Difference?
Two thick-crust, pan-baked pizzas. Both come from Italian-American kitchens. Both are rectangular and served in squares. But Sicilian and Grandma are...
Dough 12 min read
Scaling Pizza Dough for Parties: Batch Sizes, Timing, and Logistics
Making pizza for two people is technique. Making pizza for twenty people is logistics. The dough science does not change when you scale up. Everything...
Toppings 8 min read
San Marzano vs. Crushed Tomatoes: Does the Tomato Really Matter?
Walk into any grocery store's canned tomato aisle and you'll face a wall of options: San Marzano DOP, San Marzano-style, whole peeled, crushed, diced,...
Dough 8 min read
What Does Salt Actually Do in Pizza Dough?
Salt is one of four ingredients in the simplest pizza dough, yet it's doing more work than the other three combined. Remove the yeast and your dough...
Styles 11 min read
Roman Pizza al Taglio: The Most Underrated Home Pizza Style
Walk into any bakery in Rome and you'll see rectangular slabs of pizza behind glass, cut to order with scissors, weighed on a scale, wrapped in paper,...
Toppings 10 min read
Cooking Toppings Before They Go on Pizza: The Pre-Cook Guide
The enemy is moisture. Every topping you put on pizza either releases water during baking or absorbs it. Get this wrong and you end up with a soggy...
Dough 11 min read
Poolish, Biga, and Preferments for Pizza Dough
A preferment is a portion of the final dough's flour and water, mixed with a small amount of yeast, and fermented hours before you make the dough...
Equipment 10 min read
Pizza Stone vs. Pizza Steel: Which Is Better for Your Oven?
If you bake pizza at home, upgrading your baking surface is the single highest-impact equipment change you can make. The difference between pizza baked...
Science 11 min read
Pizza Oven Thermodynamics: Why Temperature Alone Isn't Enough
A 500F home oven and a 500F wood-fired oven produce completely different pizzas. The home oven takes 7-8 minutes and dries the crust out. The...
Technique 9 min read
Pizza on a Gas Grill: Technique for 700F+ Baking
Your gas grill can reach temperatures your kitchen oven can only dream about. Most home ovens max out at 500-550F. A standard three-burner gas grill,...
Dough 8 min read
Pizza Dough Troubleshooting: Sticky, Tough, Dense, or Bland
Most pizza dough problems fall into four categories: sticky, tough, dense, or bland. Each has specific causes rooted in the interaction between flour,...
Dough 11 min read
Pizza Dough Recipe by Weight: 4 Formulas for 4 Styles
Cups and tablespoons are the enemy of consistent pizza dough. A "cup of flour" can weigh anywhere from 120g to 160g depending on how you scoop it. That...
Dough 11 min read
Pizza Dough Kneading: Hand vs. Stand Mixer vs. No-Knead
There are three fundamentally different ways to develop gluten in pizza dough, and they produce noticeably different crusts. Hand mixing gives you...