Top 28+ secrets to making restaurant-quality pizza at home

Pizza perfection

Takeaway and restaurant pizza can be pretty good, especially when cooked in a searingly hot, wood-fired oven. But there's something truly satisfying about making it yourself, and it's easier than you might think. Here's our guide to creating pizza perfection, with tips and tricks for the best dough, the all-important crisp base, and a huge choice of sauces and toppings. There are speedy pizzas, some that take a little more time, gluten-free and vegan options, yeast-free pizzas, and new twists on favourites.

The best flour to use

Strong Italian 00 flour, or pizza flour, is the best flour to give a crisp, light crust with lots of big, airy pockets. It's very finely ground and the Italians love it for pasta-making too. It's reasonably easy to find but failing that, use a strong bread flour instead or a 50-50 mixture of strong flour and plain flour. The result won't be exactly the same, but you'll still have a tasty pizza.

Making dough

Pizza dough consists of just four ingredients – flour, yeast, water and salt. It's by working and kneading the dough that the gluten protein in the flour expands and stretches, which will cause the dough to rise. You can knead by hand or in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment. It usually takes around 10 minutes. Check it's kneaded sufficiently by pressing the dough with your finger – it should bounce back.

Rolling out the dough

Once the dough is ready to shape into pizzas, it will be stretchy and pliable, so you can pull it into shape with your hands. Otherwise, use a rolling pin to start with. It should be uniform in thickness all over, and it's easy to coax it into being even by simply pulling the dough.

Sauce: fresh tomatoes

A fresh tomato sauce for pizza needs a specific type of cooking tomato, namely San Marzano. They have thick skins and flesh, and contain much less water than salad tomatoes. Plus they're sweet and low in acidity, with few seeds. Skin the tomatoes before roughly chopping and cooking with a little garlic and seasoning until thickened.

Sauce: tinned tomatoes

There's nothing wrong at all with using tinned tomatoes for the sauce. However, buy Italian plum tomatoes, preferably San Marzano. Although they will cost a little more, cheaper brands tend to be too watery and not as sweet. Take the tomatoes out of their juice and mash them with your hands or a potato masher to keep the texture, and add a little sea salt and black pepper. A simple yet tasty sauce.

Sauce: passata

For a speedy, easy sauce, try using passata – tomato sauce which has been strained of its skin and seeds. Good Italian brands will be thicker and sweeter so buy the best quality you can. Add a little sea salt and perhaps a pinch of dried oregano, depending on your recipe. Ladle a little into the centre of the dough, then use the base of the ladle to spread it evenly and thinly all over the surface.

Cheese: block mozzarella

Mass-produced block mozzarella is used for commercial pizzas, as well as for home-cooked. It's quite solid, easy to grate, melts very well without burning and becomes quite stretchy. It's rather bland, so add some freshly-grated Parmesan on top of the tomato sauce before scattering the grated mozzarella over.

How to achieve the crispy base

Most of us don't have the luxury of a pizza oven at home, so what's the best way to get that crisp base? The oven needs to be at its hottest and use a pre-heated baking stone, metal pizza dish, baking tray or cast iron pan. This almost replicates a pizza oven, ensuring the base sears quickly and is evenly crisp. Alternatively, start the pizza in a very hot cast iron pan on the hob, then pop it under the grill to brown the top.

Getting pizza into a hot oven

The question is – how do you get the assembled pizza on to a hot baking stone or metal pizza dish? Use a pizza paddle or a rimless baking sheet, well dusted with semolina or flour. Then it simply slides off into the oven without sticking.

Invest in a pizza cutter

They're not expensive and cut pizza perfectly, so it's worth buying a pizza cutter. They also make easy work of cutting pastry, especially difficult-to-handle filo and puff pastry.

Roman pizza

In Naples, home of pizza, pizza dough, by law, can only be made with flour, salt, yeast and water. In Rome, cooks add olive oil to the dough, which makes it more pliable and makes it easier to roll out more thinly. So typically Roman pizza is much thinner and more crispy than its Neapolitan cousin, often sold in rectangular slices in takeaways.

Stromboli

Whereas calzone is definitely Italian, stromboli was invented in Philadelphia in the 1950s. It's like a stuffed pizza, where a rectangle of dough is topped with tomatoes, ham and cheese, leaving a narrow strip around the edges. The edges are glazed to make it stick and it's rolled up into a sausage shape before baking, then cut into slices. It makes great sharing food and you can vary the fillings according to preference, but there must be cheese.

Pizza bianca

This is white, as opposed to red, pizza, with no tomato sauce. It's a wonderfully cheesy option – the base is usually covered in ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan. Crème fraîche can be used in place of the ricotta, and it could also topped with ham or salami, green olives, artichoke hearts or anchovies.

Four cheese pizza

Quattro formaggi, four cheese pizza, is always a big hit. But which cheeses should you use? The Italians often combine mozzarella, Gorgonzola, Parmesan and fontina, which is a very good melting cheese. You could substitute it with Emmental. The blue cheese must be soft and creamy, with a good strong flavour.