Roman Tonda Pizza: The Thin, Crisp Round That Suits a Home Oven

Sit down for dinner at a pizzeria in Rome and, Ken Forkish writes, you’re likely to get a pizza with a very thin, light, crackery crust that gives just a little when you bite it: the exact opposite of a soft Neapolitan. Tonda simply means round, which separates it from the rectangular pizza Romans buy by the slice, pizza al taglio.

What makes it different

• Half the dough. Forkish’s Roman pizza is the same diameter as his Neapolitan, about 12 inches, from roughly half the dough.
• Rolled, not stretched. He rolls it with a pin, right over the edges, until it’s “like a piece of paper.” There’s no cornicione to protect, so the rim stays thin and crisp, with a few bubbles.
• Crisp, to a degree. In Rome, some tonde are crisp all the way through; others have cracker-crisp edges and a slightly soft middle. Forkish puts the difference down to the dough’s hydration, how thin it’s rolled, how it’s baked and how much moisture the sauce and cheese release.
• Light toppings. Good tomatoes, olive oil, anchovies, dried oregano, fior di latte, and fresh or semidried cherry tomatoes in season. A thin crust can’t carry much.

Is “Roman-style” one thing?

Not really, and it’s worth knowing before you go looking. Modernist Pizza counted at least five different things sold as “Roman-style” pizza and found Romans themselves puzzled by the idea of a single style. Two of them get confused with tonda:

• The super-thin, cracker-like pizza this article is about. The book found it at a handful of Roman pizzerias, including Da Remo, Ivo a Trastevere and Emma, and notes that most of them are fairly recent: Da Remo dates its start to 1976 and Emma opened in 2014.
• A crisper Neapolitan. Most of the Rome pizzerias rated highest by the Gambero Rosso guide, the book found, actually make what it calls Rest-of-Italy Neapolitan, known in Italy as classico: a Neapolitan pizza baked in a cooler oven so the crust comes out a bit crispy. That’s a different pizza, much closer to Neapolitan than to tonda. If that’s what you want, see Neapolitan pizza at home.

The book’s view is that “tonda” describes a shape rather than a style. For a home cook, the useful point is simply which pizza you’re aiming for. Here it’s the thin one.

The dough

The Planner’s Roman tonda formula follows DeliVita’s published Romana Tonda dough: 00 flour (or half 00 and half all-purpose), 60% water, 2% salt and about a tablespoon of olive oil per 500 g of flour, rested overnight in the fridge. For four 12-inch pizzas:

The 720.3 g total makes four balls of 180 g, the Planner’s portion for a 12-inch tonda. Forkish goes lighter still, recommending 150 g balls for Roman pizza. For comparison, the Planner’s Neapolitan-style ball for the same size is 250 g.

The low hydration matters here. A drier dough rolls thin without sticking and bakes crisp; Forkish notes that the less water in the dough, the crisper the whole crust.

Rolling it out

Forkish’s method, from his own pizzeria:

• Use plenty of flour on the counter, the dough and the pin. A wooden pin sticks less than stone or metal.
• Press down from the middle to the outer edges, rolling over the edges in each direction and turning the dough as you go. Don’t try to keep a rim.
• If the dough is elastic and stops stretching, leave it a few minutes and go back to it.
• Keep going until it’s very, very thin and about 12 inches across.

DeliVita adds an optional light docking with a fork, which helps keep large bubbles from forming.

The pomodoro: cheese after baking

One of Forkish’s favorite versions of tonda is a pomodoro: the crust is baked with nothing but tomato sauce, basil and a little olive oil, and grated cheese goes on the moment it comes out of the oven. He suggests caciocavallo, a stretched-curd cheese from southern Italy, or the easier-to-find Parmigiano-Reggiano, Grana Padano or aged pecorino. The cheese stays mostly unmelted, sharp against the hot, crisp base.

It’s also the easiest tonda to get right at home, since there’s no melting cheese to time against a thin crust.

Make it

Time: about 45 minutes of active work spread over two days, an overnight rest in the fridge, and 5 to 8 minutes per pizza in the oven.

Ingredients (four 12-inch pizzas)

• Dough: 436 g 00 flour (or half 00 and half all-purpose), 262 g cold water, 9 g fine salt, 1.3 g instant yeast, 12 g olive oil
• 280 g uncooked tomato sauce (canned whole peeled tomatoes blended briefly with salt)
• 24 to 32 fresh basil leaves
• 80 to 120 g caciocavallo, aged pecorino, Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano, for grating
• Extra-virgin olive oil, for finishing

The sauce is the Pizza Calculator’s starting amount for a 12-inch tonda, 44 to 73 g each. Forkish uses up to 100 g on his pomodoro, which has no other topping.

Method

1. Mix. Whisk the flour, salt and yeast together, add the water and oil, and mix until no dry flour remains. Rest 15 minutes, then knead briefly until smooth and elastic.
2. Rise. Cover and leave at room temperature for about 2 hours.
3. Ball and chill. Divide into four 180 g balls, cover and refrigerate for about 24 hours. (DeliVita refrigerates the whole batch and divides it the next day; that works too.)
4. Warm up. Take the balls out about 2 hours before baking.
5. Preheat. Put a steel or stone on an upper rack, no more than 8 inches below the broiler, and preheat at 500 to 550°F (260 to 288°C) for 45 to 60 minutes. Switch to the broiler 10 minutes before the first pizza goes in.
6. Roll. Flour a dough ball on both sides and roll it out with a rolling pin, from the middle outward and over the edges, to about 12 inches and very thin. If it springs back, let it rest a few minutes and roll again.
7. Top. Spread about 70 g of sauce to within ½ inch of the edge and add 6 to 8 basil leaves.
8. Bake. Turn off the broiler, slide the pizza onto the steel or stone and bake at 550°F for about 5 minutes, until the rim is golden. Then broil for about 2 minutes, checking after 1, until the crust has spots of brown and a little char.
9. Finish. Drizzle with olive oil, grate 20 to 30 g of cheese over the top and serve.

Check that your oven allows its broiler to be used this way.

What you’re aiming for

Forkish’s checklist for a home Roman pizza:

• 12 inches or more across, with the sauce spread to about ¼ to ½ inch from the edge.
• Medium brown with darker spots: very thin and crisp, but bubbled at the rim.
• Very light when you pick it up.
• The underside spotted dark brown or even black.
• A middle that’s soft to crisp; slices may not flop at all, depending on how wet the toppings are.

In a portable pizza oven, the Planner’s tonda bake is 2 to 3 minutes with the stone at 675 to 750°F (360 to 400°C), close to DeliVita’s 360 to 400°C. Roll it just as thin.

How it compares

All three bake on a steel or stone at 500 to 550°F in a home oven; see New York-style dough for the third.

Sources

• Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016): chapter 2, “Pizza Romana, or Roman Dinner Pizza” (the style, half the dough, home results, toppings); chapter 5, “How Many Dough Balls?” and “Rolling Pin Method for Roman-Style and American Bar Pizzas”; chapter 7, “Pomodoro Royale (with Cheese)” and “Pizza Marinara” (the bake, sauce and cheese amounts, 150 g Roman dough balls).
• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: pages 107–108 (the competing meanings of Roman-style pizza, the super-thin pizzerias and their dates, Rest-of-Italy Neapolitan) and page 169 (tonda as a shape rather than a style).
• DeliVita, Classic Doughs: Romana Tonda: flour, water, salt, oil, overnight fermentation, rolling and docking, 360–400°C bake. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Dough weights for each size, bake windows and topping ranges are from the site’s pizza engine.