Pizza al Padellino: Turin's Personal Pan Pizza Recipe

In Turin you order a padellino the way you’d order a personal pizza anywhere else: one small pan, one person, your own toppings. Gambero Rosso describes it as baked in a small iron or aluminum pan rather than on the oven floor, with a crispy base, a soft, airy top that holds toppings well, and crunchier edges than a normal pizza. It’s often eaten with farinata, the chickpea flatbread.

What it is, and where it came from

The pans set the style. Writing for Dissapore, Cinzia Alfè describes single-portion aluminum or iron pans no more than 20 cm across. In the traditional pizzerias, the dough is pressed into the pan, spread with tomato and kept cool until someone orders; only then is the pizza topped and baked, and it leaves the pan only to go onto the plate.

Its origins are murky. Gambero Rosso and Scatti di Gusto both pass on the story that Tuscan pizzaioli brought it to Turin after the Second World War, finding it handier to have pizzas already shaped in individual pans, and the same shops sold farinata alongside. Scatti di Gusto reports that from the postwar years to the early 1970s it was almost the only pizza in Turin. Then the Neapolitan-style pizzerias “al mattone,” baking on the oven floor, arrived and many of the old padellino places closed. The style was rediscovered after the 2006 Winter Olympics, and new padellino pizzerias have opened since.

It’s related to other pan pizzas but smaller and lighter than most. Compared with a Detroit pan or a home cast-iron pan pizza, the dough per square inch is lower, and each pizza feeds one person.

Pan size and dough per pan

Scatti di Gusto’s home recipe for one 20 cm padellino uses 100 g of flour, about 173 g of dough in all, which is about 0.55 g of dough per square centimeter of pan. That’s thicker than the site’s Neapolitan-style setting and thinner than its Sicilian-style pan. An 8-inch pan is 20.3 cm across, only about 3% more area, so the recipe works in it as published. For smaller pans, the amounts below are scaled by area (calculated).

Keep the toppings light: the dough has to rise around them.

Which pan. An 8-inch round cake pan in plain aluminum or an 8-inch cast-iron skillet is the closest match to the Turin pan. A LloydPans 7-inch deep-dish pan or a 6-inch Lodge cast-iron skillet work at the smaller weights. Whatever you use, check that it’s rated for your oven’s highest setting; some nonstick coatings aren’t.

The recipe

This is Scatti di Gusto’s home recipe for pizza al padellino, by Cinzia Alfè, multiplied by four for four 20 cm (8-inch) pans, with the method in our words. Scatti di Gusto is clear that it’s a home adaptation: Turin’s pizzaioli keep their dough recipes to themselves, and what’s known, the site says, is that they all use a well-hydrated dough with little yeast.

Time: about 30 minutes of active work, 3 to 4 hours of rising, a 30-minute rest in the pans, and 8 to 10 minutes per bake at 280°C (536°F); roughly 4 to 5¼ hours from mixing to the first pizza (calculated from the recipe’s times).

Dough (four pieces of about 173 g)

Scatti di Gusto’s recipe just says flour, without naming a type. If you can’t get fresh yeast, about 2.7 g of instant yeast is the equivalent, using the Pizza Planner’s conversion of one-third the weight of fresh (calculated). The totals count a teaspoon of olive oil as about 4 g, from King Arthur Baking’s ingredient weight chart.

Toppings (per pan)

• 80 g tomato passata, or peeled tomatoes blended smooth
• 100 g fior di latte mozzarella, cut into small pieces and drained on a tilted plate
• Salt
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Oregano or basil, to taste

Plus olive oil for the pans.

Method

1. Mix. Put the flour in a bowl. Crumble the yeast into the lukewarm water (warm water, not hot, Scatti di Gusto warns) and start mixing it into the flour. After a few seconds add the salt, keeping it away from direct contact with the yeast, then the oil, and mix to a rough dough.
2. Rest and knead. Cover with a cloth for about 10 minutes, then knead again until smooth and even.
3. Rise. Cover the dough with plastic wrap pressed onto its surface and let it rise in a bowl until doubled, 3 to 4 hours depending on the room temperature.
4. Drain the cheese. While the dough rises, cut the fior di latte into small pieces and leave it to drain on a tilted plate in the refrigerator: the rise takes hours, longer than fresh cheese should sit out.
5. Pan it. Divide the dough into four pieces of about 173 g. Oil the pans and spread a piece of dough out by hand in each one.
6. Tomato and rest. Spread 80 g of tomato over each and leave them to rest for about 30 minutes, so the dough puffs up again after being stretched. Meanwhile, turn the oven to its highest setting, without the fan, with a rack in the lower-middle position.
7. Top. Just before a pan goes in, add 100 g of the drained fior di latte, a little salt, a drizzle of olive oil and oregano or basil.
8. Bake. When the oven is up to temperature, bake as many pans as fit side by side on the rack. At 280°C (536°F), Scatti di Gusto bakes for 8 to 10 minutes, and says to adjust the time for other temperatures; if your oven tops out lower, expect it to take longer. It’s done when you lift an edge with a fork and the underside is no longer white but lightly golden.
9. Serve. Slide each pizza out of its pan with a spatula and eat it hot. Top and bake the remaining pans the same way.

Baking four pans

Scatti di Gusto’s recipe is for a single pan, so four is a question of oven space. If two fit side by side on your rack, four pizzas take two rounds of 8 to 10 minutes at 280°C, about 16 to 20 minutes of baking in all (calculated), longer in a cooler oven. Top each pan just before it goes in, as the recipe does.

Turin’s pizzerias work differently. Scatti di Gusto says that after a first rise, their dough usually matures somewhere cool for about 12 more hours, already spread in the pans under its tomato, until someone orders. At home, one batch baked in rounds is simpler.

Where to eat it in Turin

Two places with current, checked listings (October 14, 2026):

• Da Gino, Via Monginevro 46. The City of Turin’s profile dates the pizzeria to 1935, but the padellino came later: the place was destroyed by bombing in 1942, reopened on the same street in 1946, and the pan pizza appeared in the years after.
• Il Padellino, Corso Vinzaglio 21. Its own site advertises padellino and farinata.

A current listing shows what a pizzeria advertises, not that it will be open the day you go.

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Sources

• Cinzia Alfè, “Lezioni di Pizza: la ricetta al padellino della tradizione di Torino,” Scatti di Gusto (March 14, 2020, updated November 15, 2020; checked October 14, 2026): history, the 20 cm aluminum pan, how Turin pizzerias hold their dough, the complete home recipe for one pan followed here, its 280°C, 8 to 10 minute bake and underside cue, and the quick version.
• Cinzia Alfè, “Pizza al padellino: le 12 migliori di Torino,” Dissapore (May 25, 2016): pan size and material, and how traditional pizzerias pan and hold the dough.
• Pina Sozio, “Pizza al padellino: what it is and where to eat the best in Turin,” Gambero Rosso International (December 27, 2023): description and origin story.
• City of Turin, Compra Vicino profile of Pizza Da Gino (checked October 14, 2026): address, 1935 origin, wartime closure and the later arrival of the padellino.
• Il Padellino, Turin, official website (checked October 14, 2026): address and menu.
• King Arthur Baking, “Ingredient Weight Chart” (checked October 14, 2026): the weight of a teaspoon of olive oil.
• The four-pan quantities, pan areas, smaller-pan amounts and dough per square centimeter are calculated from Scatti di Gusto’s 20 cm recipe; the instant-yeast equivalent uses the Pizza Planner’s conversion.