Hot Honey Pizza: Recipe, Plus Mike's, Bees Knees and DIY Compared

Where hot honey pizza comes from

Paulie Gee’s opened in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 2010. According to Mike’s Hot Honey’s own history (checked October 14, 2026), Mike Kurtz first came across chile-infused honey at a pizzeria in Brazil while studying abroad, worked out his own recipe, and brought it to Paulie Gee’s while apprenticing there. Paulie Giannone liked the pairing and asked for small batches for the pizzeria. It went onto a hot soppressata pizza, the Hellboy, and Kurtz began bottling his honey for sale there later that year.

Accounts of the meat vary. The company’s account describes the Hellboy with hot soppressata. Ken Forkish remembered it with spicy capicola and built his own version, the Brooklyn Hot Honey Pie, around coppa. Modernist Pizza describes the Hellboy at Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop with pepperoni. The constant is a tomato and cheese pizza, a salty, spicy cured meat and honey drizzled on at the end.

The recipe

This home-oven version is adapted from Forkish’s Brooklyn Hot Honey Pie in The Elements of Pizza. It’s a 12-inch pizza on a steel or stone, with the broiler used to finish the top.

Makes: one 12-inch pizza. Time: about 15 minutes active. About 1 hour 10 minutes elapsed, most of it preheating. Make the dough ahead.

• 1 dough ball, 250 g
• 80 g pizza sauce (tomatoes and salt)
• 15 g Pecorino Romano, finely grated
• 90 g low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, coarsely grated
• 35 g hot soppressata or coppa, thinly sliced
• 7 to 14 g (1 to 2 teaspoons) hot honey
• Chile flakes, for the table

1. Put a baking steel or stone on an upper rack, no more than 8 inches below the broiler, and preheat the oven to 550°F (290°C) for 45 to 60 minutes. If your dough is refrigerated, take it out 60 to 90 minutes before baking.
2. Ten minutes before baking, switch the oven to broil.
3. Stretch the dough to 12 inches on a floured counter and move it to a lightly floured peel.
4. Spread the sauce to within ½ inch of the edge. Scatter the pecorino, then the mozzarella. If you’re using soppressata, lay the slices on top without overlapping them.
5. Turn off the broiler, slide the pizza onto the steel and set the oven back to bake at 550°F. Bake for about 5 minutes, until the rim is golden.
6. Switch to broil for about 1 minute, until the cheese has melted and the rim has brown spots and a little char. Watch it closely.
7. Slide the pizza onto a board. If you’re using coppa, drape it over the hot pizza now. Drizzle the honey thinly over the top and serve with chile flakes.

About the numbers. The 250 g dough ball is the Pizza Planner’s default for a 12-inch Neapolitan-style pizza; Forkish’s own dough balls weigh about 275 g. He uses 100 g of sauce; 80 g keeps this pizza inside the Pizza Calculator’s 60 to 90 g range for 12 inches. The 6-minute bake sits at the short end of the Planner’s 6 to 10 minutes for this style on a steel, because the broiler finishes the top. For the sauce, use the basic tomato-and-salt sauce.

Soppressata or coppa? Hot soppressata bakes on and crisps at the edges, as on the Hellboy. Coppa is better draped over the hot pizza, as Forkish does, so it stays tender. Forkish also suggests baking a few slices of quick-pickled onion on top of the cheese.

Why the honey goes on last

Honey is about 80% sugar by weight, mostly fructose and glucose: USDA reference data give 82 g of sugars per 100 g. King Arthur Baking notes that honey browns quickly in baking because of the kinds of sugar it contains. Several minutes in a 550°F oven can darken it and could scorch it. Drizzled over the finished pizza, it stays bright and runny, and the residual heat loosens it so it spreads.

Use less than you’d think. Forkish’s instruction is a drizzle, and “don’t go overboard.” His advice for assertive flavors like hot honey, pickled onions and chile is to keep them in balance. One to two teaspoons on a 12-inch pizza is a good start.

Mike’s, Bees Knees and homemade compared

Mike’s Hot Honey

This is the hot honey from the original Hellboy at Paulie Gee’s, and the one Forkish names in his account of the pizza. The maker’s FAQ (checked October 14, 2026) lists the ingredients as honey, chili peppers and vinegar. It comes in a squeeze bottle that makes a thin drizzle easy. The vinegar adds a little acidity. An Extra Hot version, made with a hotter pepper, has been sold since 2020, according to the company. Check current price on Amazon.

Bushwick Kitchen Bees Knees Spicy Honey

Bushwick Kitchen’s product page (checked October 14, 2026) describes Bees Knees as wildflower honey with a “habanero kick.” It doesn’t publish a full ingredient list, so read the bottle if you want to know exactly what’s in it. Check current price on Amazon.

Homemade hot honey

Making your own lets you choose the honey and the heat. The method follows the hot infusion in Oregon State University Extension’s Infusing Honey Safely (EM 9885). The amount of chile is an editorial starting point, not a tested heat level, so adjust it to taste.

Makes: just under 1 cup, because some honey stays with the strained flakes. Time: 10 minutes to 2 hours of infusing, plus warming and straining. You’ll need a thermometer.

• 340 g (1 cup) honey
• 2 to 3 g (about 1 to 2 teaspoons) dried chile flakes, fully dried: brittle and crisp, not leathery

1. Warm the honey in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring, until a thermometer reads 140°F (60°C).
2. Add the chile flakes. Keep the honey at 140°F or above, but below a simmer, stirring now and then. Taste it from time to time and stop when the heat is where you want it, anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours.
3. While it’s still hot, strain the honey through a fine sieve or several layers of cheesecloth to remove all the flakes.
4. Pour it into a clean jar and seal it with a tight-fitting lid.

Dried chiles only, and no vinegar. Oregon State University Extension treats fully dried chiles as a low-risk addition to honey. It counts fresh chiles, garlic and other moist, low-acid additions as the highest risk, and allows them only in limited amounts by its hot method. Mike’s adds vinegar to its bottled honey, but this recipe doesn’t: keep vinegar out of the jar.

Storage. OSU Extension says honey infused by its methods keeps indefinitely when sealed in food-grade containers with tight-fitting lids. That applies when you follow the steps above: fully dried flakes, held at 140°F or above, strained and sealed in a clean jar. It may crystallize in a cold room; set the jar in a pan of warm water to loosen it. If the honey ever bubbles or smells sour, it has started to ferment, so throw it out. Don’t give honey of any kind, infused or not, to babies under 1 year old.

What else goes well with hot honey

The pattern on published pizzas is salt and fat underneath the sweetness. Spicy cured meats are the classic: soppressata, coppa, or pepperoni as at Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop. Ricotta works too. Modernist Pizza describes a Detroit-style pizza at Paulie Gee’s Logan Square in Chicago topped with pepperoni, bacon jam, cold ricotta piped on after baking and Mike’s Hot Honey.

For other things to add after the bake, such as olive oil, flaky salt and fresh herbs, see finishing oils and flaky salt. For more on pepperoni, see pepperoni science.

Some links above are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, jayarr.pizza earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Sources

• Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016): chapter 7, Brooklyn Hot Honey Pie (recipe, oven method and balance of flavors); chapter 1, the Hellboy at Paulie Gee’s.
• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: page 224 (Paulie Gee’s and the Slice Shop’s Hellboy) and page 244 (Paulie Gee’s Logan Square).
• Mike’s Hot Honey: consumer FAQ (ingredients, Extra Hot, storage) and Our Story (Brazil, November 2003; Paulie Gee’s, August 2010; the Hellboy with hot soppressata; Extra Hot, July 2020). Checked October 14, 2026.
• Bushwick Kitchen: Bees Knees Spicy Honey product page. Checked October 14, 2026.
• US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 28 (2015), food 19296, Honey: 82.12 g total sugars per 100 g, including 40.94 g fructose and 35.75 g glucose.
• Kye Ameden, “Baking with liquid sweeteners,” King Arthur Baking (2017): honey’s browning.
• Jared Hibbard-Swanson and Joy Waite-Cusic, Infusing Honey Safely, Oregon State University Extension EM 9885 (2026): ingredient categories, the hot infusion method (140°F or above, 10 minutes to two hours, strain, seal), storage, fermentation and infants. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Dough, sauce, cheese and bake ranges: jayarr.pizza Pizza Planner and Pizza Calculator.