You don’t need a pizza oven to make genuinely great pizza at home. With a very hot oven, a preheated sheet pan or pizza stone, the right cheese, fewer toppings, and a couple of clever finishing touches, you can make homemade pizza that’s crispy, golden, bubbly, and delicious.
Table of Contents
- Better Homemade Pizza, at a Glance
- Pizza Night, But Better
- Why Homemade Pizza Can Go Wrong
- Start with the Right Pizza Dough
- How to Handle Pizza Dough
- Get Your Oven as Hot as Possible
- Preheat Your Baking Surface
- Use Less Toppings Than You Think
- Cook Ingredients That Release Water First
- Choose the Right Cheese
- Assemble Your Pizza on Parchment Paper
- Finish Your Pizza After Baking
- Homemade Pizza Troubleshooting
- Recipes to Use with This Guide
- Enjoy this guide? Check out these next
Better Homemade Pizza, at a Glance
⏰ Time: 30 minutes, plus time for your pizza dough if you’re making it from scratch.
🔥 Oven temp: As hot as your oven will go (ideally 500°F/250°C).
🍕 What to cook it on: A pizza stone, pizza steel or upside-down rimmed baking sheet.
🧀 Cheese to use: Low-moisture mozzarella is your best friend here.
🍅 Topping rules: Less is more. Too many toppings = soggy pizza.
💧 Soggy pizza fix: Cook any watery veg first, pat fresh mozzarella dry, make sure your oven and cooking surface are HOT.
💅 Finishing touches: Fresh basil, arugula, parmesan, chili oil, hot honey or burrata make it feel premium.
🧠 Don’t skip: Preheating your pizza cooking surface, it makes a huge difference.
Pizza Night, But Better
Homemade pizza is something that might sound straightforward, but so many little things can go wrong. The base can be undercooked or dry out before the toppings are cooked, the middle can go soggy, the cheese can release too much water…there are a lot of moving parts.
But the good news is you don’t need any fancy equipment or a pizza oven to make genuinely lovely pizza at home. You just need to know where homemade pizza can go wrong, and how to work around that.
This guide brings together those little things that make a BIG difference when making pizza at home – from choosing the right dough and heating your oven properly, to not getting carried away with your toppings, choosing the best cheese and cooking surface.
I like to think of it as your pizza night cheat sheet.
Why Homemade Pizza Can Go Wrong
In my experience, most homemade pizza problems come down to the same few things:
- An oven and/or cooking surface that’s not hot enough.
- Too many toppings.
- Watery toppings.
- Dough that’s been handled a bit too much.
If your pizza is soggy in the middle, it’s usually because there’s too much moisture on top of your dough. Whether that’s wet, fresh mozzarella, uncooked veggies that release a lot of water (like mushrooms), too much pizza sauce, or too many ingredients piled on top of each other.
If your base is still pale and soft, but the toppings look cooked, your oven or cooking surface likely wasn’t hot enough when you added the pizza. You want your pizza to hit strong, direct heat straight away to crisp up quickly.
None of this is complicated to fix, and once you know what to look for, making pizza at home becomes a lot more successful.
Start with the Right Pizza Dough
Making your own dough is much easier than you might think, and I prefer it, 99% of the time. I know it might seem intimidating, but I promise it’s simple. And the flavor is so much better than using storebought dough (plus, you’ll get the satisfaction of knowing you made it all yourself!)
If you don’t believe me, I have two recipes that might change your mind:
- If you’re a pizza dough beginner or you want pizza fast, my 5 minute Greek-yogurt pizza dough is the one to go for. It’s quick, easy, you don’t need yeast, you don’t have to wait for it to rise, and it’s very easy to handle.
- If you have a little more time and want that more traditional, bubbly, puffy pizza crust, use my no-knead pizza dough. It’s still very easy and hands-off, but it takes longer and gives you a gorgeously light, airy base.
But, store-bought dough is also fine if you don’t want to make your own. Try to find one without too many added ingredients (like oils, fats, and sugars) for the best flavor. The most important thing to remember is to (ideally) bring your dough to room temperature before you start shaping it. It’ll make it a lot easier to handle.
How to Handle Pizza Dough
Once you’ve chosen your dough, shaping it into pizzas is easy enough after a bit of practice. If you run into any trouble, these tips should help:
- You’ll find it’s easiest to work with when it’s relaxed and at room temperature. If it’s been in the fridge, you might find it springs back and won’t hold a circular shape when you try to stretch it out. If that happens, cover and let it rest for about 15 minutes to relax, then try again.
- Try to handle the risen dough gently (don’t worry about this if you’re using the Greek yogurt dough). You’ve just spent time creating the light, airy dough – you don’t want to knock them out by handling it too much.
- Avoid using a rolling pin to shape your pizza dough if you want a puffy crust, as it can squash out those lovely air bubbles. If you’re not worried and want a thin, crispy crust, that’s fine, but if a puffy crust is what you’re after, using your hands is best.
- Lightly flour your work surface, then gently press the dough out from the center, lraving a slightly thicker border around the edge. Once it’s roughly the size you want, you can also gently pick it up and stretch it out over the backs of your hands. Gravity is your friend here!
If the dough tears, don’t stress, just pinch it back together and let it rest for a minute or two before continuing.
Get Your Oven as Hot as Possible
Pizza is traditionally cooked in a VERY HOT (much hotter than most home ovens can reach) wood-fired oven and will literally cook in seconds.
While at home, your oven isn’t going to get quite as hot, you can still get great results.
- Preheat your oven. Turn it to the highest setting (ideally around 500°F or 250°C, or as close as your oven gets) for at least 30 minutes before you want to cook your pizza. If you have time, try to heat it for even longer, up to an hour is ideal.
That gives the oven, and whatever surface you’re cooking the pizza on, enough time to get properly hot. And that heat is what helps the base crisp up quickly.
Preheat Your Baking Surface
This is seriously one of the biggest homemade pizza upgrades, and it’s simple.
Don’t put your pizza on a cold tray. This will just slow everything down and almost defeat the purpose of preheating your oven. If you do this, you’ll likely end up with overcooked toppings and a soft, undercooked base.
Instead, remember to preheat whatever you’re cooking your pizza on. Much like making sure your oven is incredibly hot, this means that when your pizza hits the hot surface, it will very quickly crisp up, cook, and give you that lovely crispy crust you’re looking for.
You can use:
- a pizza stone.
- a pizza steel.
- a cast iron skillet.
- an upside down rimmed baking sheet or sheet pan.
A pizza stone or steel, or cast-iron skillet is great if you have one, as they retain heat much better than a traditional oven tray. But an upside down sheet pan is a fab low-effort hack. Turning it upsdie down gives you a larger, flatter surface, that makes it easier to slide the pizza on and off.
Use Less Toppings Than You Think
I know it’s incredibly tempting to just throw lots of lovely toppings on your pizza, but less really is more here.
Too many toppings make it harder for the dough to cook evenly – you can end up with a very charred top, a wet middle, and a soggy base.
Think about an Italian-style pizza – they use very limited toppings – that’s what you’re after here.
I find a good formula is: dough + sauce + cheese + 1 or 2 toppings + fresh finish.
So you could do:
- Tomato sauce + mozzarella + pepperoni + olives + basil
- Pesto + mozzarella + zucchini + ricotta + lemon zest
- Tomato sauce + mozzarella + ham + pineapple + chili oil
- Cheesy bechamel + mushrooms + pesto + basil
This doesn’t mean you can’t be super creative with your toppings – just try not to pile things up too high.
Cook Ingredients That Release Water First
This is probably one of my biggest lessons and something I’ve realized is incredibly important over the years when making pizza at home.
It’s one of the easiest ways to avoid soggy pizza. Some ingredients release a lot of water as they cook. And if that water ends up sitting on top of, or seeping into your pizza, that’s why the middle becomes wet and soft instead of crispy and golden.
- Lightly cook mushrooms, peppers, and zucchini before you add them to your pizza.
- Pat fresh mozzarella dry with paper towels.
- Drain any olives, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, or jarred pepper very well.
- Add anything very wet, like burrata, after baking if possible.
Choose the Right Cheese
Much like vegetables that release water, some mozzarella is VERY watery, and if you use too much, you’ll end up with pizza soup instead of a lovely, melty, cheesy pizza.
- Low-moisture mozzarella is the easiest and most reliable option. It melts well, and doesn’t release as much liquid as fresh mozzarella. You’ll often find it labelled as ‘pizza mozzarella’ in stores and it can come in a block.
- Fresh mozzarella is undoubtedly gorgeous, but it’s more watery. I recommend tearing it into smaller pieces, and patting it dry with a paper towel before using it. And use less than you might think you need.
- I’ll also often use pre-shredded mozzarella on pizza at home – it’s reliable and melts well.
- Parmesan is great to add extra flavor, and it’s lovely to sprinkle over a pizza as it comes out of the oven. Ricotta is great too for an extra creamy element – it works particularly well with pesto or white sauces.
Assemble Your Pizza on Parchment Paper
This is my favorite way to make homemade pizza feel less stressful!
Shape your dough on a piece of parchment paper, then add your sauce and toppings, and then slide the whole thing onto your preheated cooking surface.
It just means there’s no risk of your pizza sticking to your work surface and making an unplanned calzone. I promise it will make things a lot simpler.
Finish Your Pizza After Baking
This is where you can make a simple homemade pizza feel properly luxurious.
These low-effort, high-reward finishing touches can really elevate your pizza and make it feel better-than-store-bought:
- Fresh basil or other herbs
- A handful of arugula (rocket)
- A drizzle of chili oil
- Slithers of prosciutto
- A whole ball of burrata
- Dollops of fresh basil pesto
- Freshly grated parmesan
- A drizzle of sweet chili jam
- Lemon zest
- A swirl of hot honey sauce
- Crumbled marinated feta
Homemade Pizza Troubleshooting
There are a few possible reasons for this.
– You might have used too much sauce, had too many toppings piled on top of each other, or used fresh, watery mozzarella.
– If you use ingredients that release water as they cook, like mushrooms, cook them before you add them to your pizza. Pat dry fresh mozzarella before adding it to your pizza.
– You also need to make sure your oven AND your cooking surface is super hot when you add your pizza. This will help it cook quickly and evenly.
It’s likely either too cold or just needs to rest a little so the gluten can relax. Let it sit at room temperature for 15 to 20 minutes, then try to shape it again.
You might have had too many toppings on your pizza, your base might have been quite thick, or your oven and cooking surface may not have been hot enough.
Keep your toppings lighter than you’d think, and make sure you have a nice, hot oven.
Recipes to Use with This Guide
- 5 minute Greek yogurt pizza dough
- Easy no-knead pizza dough for a puffy, bubbly crust
- Pizza-inspired bread dipping oil
- Spicy Hawaiian pizza (because pineapple does belong on pizza, and I’ll be taking no further questions at this time)
- Peach, blue cheese and sweet chili pizza
- Spinach, ricotta and sausage pizza
The last thing to say is don’t stress too much if your pizza doesn’t come out perfectly! I’m 99% sure it’ll still taste delicious, and you’ll have learned something to switch up next time.
