This is J. Kenji López-Alt’s pan pizza from Serious Eats, and it earns its name by removing the steps where home pizza usually goes wrong. There’s no kneading: a long rest builds the gluten for you. There’s no stretching: an oiled pan lets the dough spread on its own. And there’s no transfer from a peel to a hot stone: you build the pizza in the pan and bake it there.
What you get is a thick pan pizza with a crisp, olive-oil-browned base and an open, chewy crumb under plenty of sauce and cheese. It’s a different pizza from a thin Neapolitan or New York pie, and a good first one to make.
Why it works
Kenji’s dough is wet and is never kneaded. Over a long rest at room temperature, the flour’s own enzymes and the slowly rising gas organize the gluten, and he reports that the result is at least as strong as a kneaded dough. The same loose, wet dough is what makes stretching unnecessary: on a greased surface there’s no friction holding it back, so it relaxes outward until it nearly fills the pan by itself. Your fingertips only finish the job.
The oil in the pan does the rest: Kenji credits the well-greased pan with the crisp, almost fried base.
The recipe
Makes two 10-inch pan pizzas, which Kenji says serves 4. Active time about 20 minutes. Elapsed time at least 10¾ hours: 8 to 24 hours for the first rise, 2 hours in the pans and 12 to 15 minutes in the oven.
Dough
| Ingredient | Grams | Baker’s % |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 400 | 100% |
| Water | 275 | 68.75% |
| Kosher salt | 10 | 2.5% |
| Instant yeast | 4 | 1% |
| Extra-virgin olive oil | 8 | 2% |
| Dough | 697 |
Each ball is about 349 g. The baker’s percentages and totals are calculated from Kenji’s gram amounts.
For the pans and toppings
- Extra-virgin olive oil: 1 to 2 tablespoons per pan, plus a little for drizzling
- Pizza sauce: ¾ cup per pizza (1½ cups in all)
- Low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, grated: 340 g (12 ounces) in all, half per pizza
- Toppings as you like, a few basil leaves, and up to 57 g (2 ounces) grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano to finish
Pans: two 10-inch cast-iron skillets or two 10-inch round cake pans. You need one pan per pizza if you want to bake them together. Any pan must be oven-safe at 550°F; check the maker’s maximum temperature for a nonstick coating. A 10¼-inch Lodge cast-iron skillet is a common choice.
Method
- Mix. In a bowl at least 4 to 6 times the volume of the dough, combine the flour, salt, yeast, water and 8 g of oil. Mix with your hand or a wooden spoon just until no dry flour remains. Don’t knead.
- First rise, 8 to 24 hours. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, sealing the edges well, and leave it on the counter somewhere no warmer than 75°F (24°C). It should rise dramatically and fill the bowl, and look puffy and lumpy. In a hot kitchen it can overproof toward the end of that range.
- Divide and ball. Dust the top with flour and turn the dough onto a well-floured counter. It will deflate a little, which is fine. Cut it in two and form each piece into a tight ball, tucking it under itself with floured hands.
- Pan the dough. Pour 1 to 2 tablespoons of oil into each pan. Put in a ball, turn it to coat, then press it flat with your palm, spreading the oil over the whole bottom and up the sides.
- Second rise, 2 hours. Cover each pan tightly and leave it at room temperature. Above 75°F (24°C) the dough may need less time; below 65°F (18°C), more.
- Preheat. After the first hour, set a rack in the middle of the oven and heat it to 550°F (290°C).
- Finish shaping. After 2 hours the dough should mostly fill the pan. Press it into the corners with your fingertips and pop any large bubbles; left alone, they balloon in the oven and shed their toppings. Then work around the edge, lifting the dough like a blanket so trapped air underneath can escape, since a pocket of air keeps that patch from browning.
- Top. Spread ¾ cup of sauce over each pizza right to the edge. Cover it with half the mozzarella, again to the edge if you like crisp cheese at the rim, season with salt, and add your toppings. Drizzle with olive oil and scatter a few basil leaves if using.
- Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until the top is golden and bubbly and the bottom is golden and crisp when you lift it with a thin spatula. Sprinkle with the grated hard cheese as it comes out.
- Check the base. If the bottom isn’t as crisp as you want and your pan’s maker approves it for stovetop use, set the pan over medium heat on the stovetop for 1 to 3 minutes, moving it so it browns evenly. Oven-safe doesn’t mean stovetop-safe: an oven-only cake pan must not go on a burner. Slide the pizza onto a board and cut each into 6 slices.
To bake one pizza at a time, Kenji puts the second ball in a sealed bag or container after step 3 and refrigerates it for up to three days, then carries on from step 4 when he’s ready.
Cheese and sauce
Use dry mozzarella. Kenji’s recipe is written for low-moisture (aged) mozzarella, the firm, yellowish blocks, and he warns against fresh mozzarella because it is too moist for this pizza. Any good melting cheese works: he suggests young cheddar, Monterey Jack, young provolone or Muenster, alone or mixed. See low-moisture vs. fresh mozzarella for the difference.
Use plenty of sauce. A thick pie like this takes a thick layer, about ¾ cup per pizza. Kenji spreads sauce and cheese all the way to the edge for crunchy, browned bits around the rim; leave a border if you prefer a plain crust edge. For a sauce, see how to make pizza sauce.
Or put the cheese down first. Modernist Pizza calls cheese-first assembly a viable idea for most types of pizza: the cheese keeps the sauce from soaking into the crust, and the sauce protects the cheese. It’s how Detroit-style pizza is built; see Detroit-style pizza at home.
When it goes wrong
| What you see | Likely cause | Next time |
|---|---|---|
| Pale, soft bottom | The top finished before the base crisped | Coat the pan with the full 1 to 2 tablespoons of oil; if the maker approves the pan for stovetop use, finish it on a burner for 1 to 3 minutes |
| Dough slack and collapsed after the first rise | Too warm a spot for too long | Keep it at or below 75°F, and use it nearer 8 hours in a warm kitchen |
| Dough won’t reach the pan edges | It hasn’t had its full 2 hours, or the room is cool | Give it more time before pressing; don’t force it |
| Big domed bubbles that shed their toppings | Bubbles weren’t popped before topping | Press the dough out and pop large bubbles in step 7 |
| Watery center | Fresh mozzarella | Use low-moisture mozzarella grated from a block |
How it compares with the Pizza Planner
The Pizza Planner doesn’t plan round skillet pizzas. Its pan styles are Detroit and Sicilian in rectangular pans, with their own King Arthur Baking formulas, and its hearth doughs use far less yeast over a longer, colder rise. Kenji’s dough, with 1% instant yeast and a room-temperature rise, is a recipe of its own, so follow his timings rather than the Planner’s when you make it. If you want a bigger pan pizza for more people, the Planner’s Detroit and Sicilian routes scale to the pan you have.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does the dough go in the fridge?
- Not for the first rise. Kenji's recipe rests the dough at cool room temperature, no warmer than 75°F (24°C), for 8 to 24 hours. The fridge comes in only if you want to hold a dough ball: after dividing, he refrigerates it in a sealed bag or container for up to three days, then pans it and gives it its 2-hour rise.
- Do I need a cast-iron skillet?
- No. Kenji's recipe works in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet or a 10-inch round cake pan. Whichever you use, it must be oven-safe at 550°F; check the maker's maximum temperature for any nonstick coating.
- Can I use fresh mozzarella?
- Kenji says not to: fresh mozzarella is too moist for this pizza. Use low-moisture (dry) mozzarella grated from a block, or another good melting cheese such as young cheddar, Monterey Jack or young provolone.
- Can I use active dry yeast?
- Kenji's recipe calls for instant yeast. The Pizza Planner uses a third more active dry yeast than instant by weight, a conversion from Modernist Pizza, so 4 g of instant yeast becomes about 5.3 g of active dry. Follow the yeast maker's directions for rehydrating it and take that water from the 275 g.
- Why is my pizza's bottom pale?
- Check that the pan had its 1 to 2 tablespoons of oil spread over the bottom and sides, and that the pizza baked until the bottom was golden when lifted with a spatula. If the top is done before the base, Kenji's fix is to set the pan over medium heat on the stovetop for 1 to 3 minutes until the bottom crisps. Do that only with a pan its maker approves for stovetop use; an oven-only cake pan must not go on a burner.
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Sources
- J. Kenji López-Alt, “Foolproof Pan Pizza,” Serious Eats (page updated September 21, 2025): ingredients, method, rise times and temperatures, pans, bake, stovetop finish, holding dough in the fridge, and the cheese notes. Checked October 14, 2026.
- Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1, page 104: putting the cheese on first.
- Pizza Planner and Pizza Doctor (jayarr.pizza): the pan styles and the instant-to-active-dry yeast conversion. Baker’s percentages, dough total and ball weight are calculated from Kenji’s gram amounts.