Cooking Toppings Before They Go on Pizza: The Pre-Cook Guide

Whether a topping needs cooking first comes down to three things: how long the pizza bakes, how much water the topping holds and how thick it’s cut, and whether it’s raw meat that has to reach a safe temperature.

Start with your bake time

These are the site’s Planner values. In 90 seconds, a topping barely gets hot through, so anything that needs real cooking has to be cooked beforehand. In a 25-minute pan bake, a lot more cooks on the pizza, and the risk flips to drying out.

A quick way to decide

1. Know your bake time. The shorter the bake, the more you cook ahead.
2. Cook raw poultry fully first. Cook chicken to 165°F (74°C) before it goes on.
3. Cook raw sausage first, at least partly. In a portable oven, cook it through. In a home oven, small pieces can finish on the pizza if they were partly cooked first; check that the thickest piece reaches 160°F (71°C).
4. Cook watery vegetables until their liquid is gone. Sauté mushrooms until the liquid they release has evaporated, and wilt spinach and squeeze it dry.
5. Cook dense vegetables until nearly tender. Roast or blanch potatoes, squash and broccoli; the pizza only finishes them.
6. Slice everything else thin and put it on raw. That covers cured meats, olives, thin-sliced onions and peppers, and garlic coated in olive oil.

Water content

Most of these vegetables are around 90% water. What matters is whether that water comes out during the bake and lands in your pizza.

Water figures are from the USDA’s FoodData Central. Fresh mozzarella, at about 60% water, has its own guide: low-moisture vs. fresh mozzarella.

Water content alone doesn’t decide it. Onions hold about as much water as broccoli, but thin slices soften in a home-oven bake while broccoli florets stay raw. Mushrooms are the classic problem because they give up their water as they heat.

What can go on raw

Pepperoni and salami. They’re cured, and they render and crisp on the pizza. More on why some pepperoni cups in the science of pepperoni.

Prosciutto and other thin cured meats. These go on after the bake. Ken Forkish drapes very thin slices of prosciutto, coppa and similar whole-muscle cured meats over the pizza right after it comes out of the oven, so they just melt into it.

Olives. Already cured. Modernist Pizza warns that small black olives can burn, because they’re dark and absorb a lot of heat, so halve them or tuck them under the cheese.

Thin-sliced onions and peppers. On Adam Kuban’s bar pizza in Forkish’s book, diced green pepper and thin half-moons of red onion go on raw for a 9-minute bake at 550°F. Forkish coats raw onion slices in a little oil to keep them from scorching.

Garlic. Slice it thin and coat it in oil; Forkish says that’s what keeps it from burning. See herbs on pizza for garlic and herb timing.

Anchovies. Either way. Forkish lays them on his marinara after it comes out of the oven.

Tomato sauce. In Naples, as Forkish describes it, the sauce is nothing more than canned tomatoes pureed with salt, with no cooking. See how to make pizza sauce.

Tender greens. Forkish’s escarole pizza uses raw escarole tossed in oil, laid over the sauce and covered with cheese, which protects it.

What to cook first

Mushrooms. At about 92% water, raw mushrooms release liquid as they heat. Forkish sautés button mushrooms before they go on, and roasts wild mushrooms in a skillet in the oven while it preheats. Cook them in a single layer so they brown rather than steam, and keep going until the liquid they give off has evaporated.

Dense vegetables. Potatoes, winter squash and broccoli won’t cook through in most pizza bakes. Forkish roasts and crumbles potato for one pizza, and roasts butternut squash for an hour for another.

Onions, for sweetness. Raw thin slices are fine, but slow-cooked onions give a softer, sweeter result. Forkish sweats them in a covered pan over low heat for 12 to 15 minutes for his tarte flambée.

Bacon. Forkish sautés it to medium doneness first; it finishes crisping on the pizza.

Sausage. This is where oven type matters most. USDA guidance is that ground meat and sausage must reach 160°F (71°C).

• In a portable oven, the bake is too short: cook sausage through before it goes on.
• In a home oven, Forkish shows two approaches. For link sausage, he cuts it into 1/2-inch slices and part-cooks them for 2 to 3 minutes, and they finish on the pizza. For loose fennel sausage, he cooks it through first, about 5 minutes in a skillet, then crumbles it.
• Tony Gemignani’s cast-iron skillet pizza in The Pizza Bible uses raw sausage: after the crust’s first bake, nickel-size pinches go on over the cheese and cook as the pizza finishes. Gemignani writes that raw sausage cooks perfectly in the time his recipes allow when it’s used in the quantity and piece size he calls for, so that holds for his method, not for any size of piece or length of bake. If you try it, check the thickest piece with an instant-read thermometer; browning alone doesn’t show that ground meat is cooked through.

Chicken. Always cook it fully first, to 165°F (74°C). On the pizza it only reheats.

Keep a fast bake light

In a 1 to 2 minute bake, every extra layer of topping is something else the heat has to get through. Neapolitan pizzas, as Forkish describes them, are simpler and less cheesy than a New York pizza, and fewer, thinner toppings cook in the time the crust takes.

Sources

• Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016), chapter 2 (Neapolitan toppings and sauce) and chapter 7 (topping preparation in the recipes: mushrooms, sausage, bacon, onions, potatoes, squash, escarole, garlic and cured meats).
• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1, page 373: dark toppings such as olives absorbing heat.
• Tony Gemignani, The Pizza Bible (2014), cast-iron skillet pizza and sweet fennel sausage, as reprinted with the publisher’s permission on Cut Out + Keep (checked October 14, 2026): raw sausage added after the first bake.
• US Department of Agriculture, FoodData Central: water content of raw vegetables and pepperoni.
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service: safe minimum internal temperatures for ground meat, sausage and poultry.
• Bake times and temperatures are the site’s Planner values for each style and oven.