To add to everything that’s been said, if you can get your hands on some fresh mozerella it may also make a difference. It’s available in some supermarkets and Italian delis, shaped into balls and floating in water usually, to keep it moist.
Pre-packaged mozzarella, like Polly-o, can be hard and rubbery, fresh mozerella is soft and creamy. Yum! Squeeze out the excess water before putting it on your pizza, so it doesn’t make the dough soggy.
I always get raves on my crust. I use the bread machine recipe from The Joy of Cooking but with a bit more olive oil and flour. Then I add finely chopped herbs: basil, garlic, oregano and parsley. These herbs should be fresh but even dry will give an improvement.
I second the cheap, unglazed tile in place of the pizza stone. Set your oven to the highest setting (usually 500 deg.) and give the tiles time to heat up. If you are doing more than one pie (when I gear up to make pizza it is just as easy to make a few) give the tiles time to reheat before you put in another one.
A pizza peel is an essential item. Just make sure to coat the peel with a thin layer of cornmeal so the dough slides off easily.
I’m also one who’s homemade pizza borders on lasagna in thickness. I don’t get too fancy with mine, but here are some easy tips that I’ve learned:
Precook the pepperoni and drain the grease. You will be amazed at the amount of grease that is in that stuff. Some will tell you that the grease adds to the flavor. Whatever. It still tastes great without all of it and your arteries will thank you. Also, the top of your pizza won’t be swimming in grease.
Precook the mushrooms with some garlic. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they cook. You don’t need that on your pizza either.
The sauce is very important. The best I’ve sound so far in a can is the Contadina that some others have mentioned. I add spices and parmesan to the sauce. Trust me on the parmesan in the sauce thing. It works.
I season the top of the crust. I also cook my crust for a few minutes by itself. I want it to seal up a little and not sponge up the sauce.
Since I do like pizza sauce, I add more than one layer and put it between the layers of cheese and toppings.
All that said, I’m looking forward to trying a few of the suggestions here.
My pizza usually costs about $20 to make two pizzas – it’s something I only do for a special occasion, therefore. But it’s definitely worth spending the bucks and the three-four hours in the kitchen in order to feed ten people with excellent pizza.
If you can make your own crust, do so. Someone mentioned adding herbs to the crust; although this doesn’t have a huge effect on flavor, it’s very easy to do and makes the pizza look extra-classy.
Definitely make your own sauce. You can make sauce in huge quantities and freeze it in sandwich-bag ziplocs. I like my pizza sauce to be very herby, so I load it up with rosemary, oregano, thyme, and basil. Garlic, wine, onions, and olive oil round it out, except of course for tomatoes, pepper, and salt.
I use medium-quality mozzarella – neither fresh (which I personally think is wasted on pizza) nor Kraft, but rather whatever is sold in the cheese section of a deli. Use fresh parmesan as well, and maybe a little romano, cheddar, or other cheese for a little extra flavor.
Roast garlic is a great topping, as is good olives, feta cheese, spinach, dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, homemade pickled onions, etc. I load it up – the more stinky toppings, the better.
Hot oven, definitely – I only learned this recently. Don’t use a pizza stone/tiles unless you have a peel – trying to do otherwise is disastrous.
Man, I want homemade pizza now. Maybe I’ll do a dinner party soon.
Daniel
Trogladyte!
a small pinch of flour on the peel with a near constant back and forth spin motion of the peel will keep the pizza from sticking, and no gritty cornmeal taste to your pizza.
But I’m a fanatic on this subject.
Nothin’ wrong with that cornmeal taste – it’s crunchy!
Daniel
writing from the land of grits
Try using Pesto sauce instead of tomato sauce. Personally, I whip up some cilantro pesto in the blender and put that on. If you do it yourself you can add additional seranno chili peppers to give it a nice kick.
Or if that’s not enough kick for you, it’s nice to add more chili peppers.
I use that turkey pepperoni, yes, it’s not the connoiseur quality, but it’s less greasy, and 30% less fat.
Also, a more creative local place around here put some capers in there a few places. I haven’t quite perfected that one, but it’s cool to use capers for something.
One thing I’ve concluded: Resist the impulse to pile on toppings just because you can. Extra sauce, double cheese, meatlover’s pizzas may work okay in a professional oven, but a little restraint will produce better results at home.
I’ve been on a deep dish kick recently.
Pillsbury dough, it actually works pretty darn good, and I can make a pizza right after work or trip to the store.
Put the dough in an oiled cast iron pan, slightly up the sides
lay down slices of mozzarella
then press in dabs of loose italian sausage
top with whole canned tomatoes, squished and drained
maybe add some fried onions or peppers or mushrooms if you want
season with the spices of your choice, top with grated romano or parmesian
Cook at 400 for about a half hour until done. Good stuff.
All great advice but…
I grill my pizza’s.
The key to any good pizza is the sauce and using olive oil on the crust.
For the sauce I use Classico’s Roasted Garlic and Basil spaghetti sauce. Hey, it’s all tomato based. 
I coat the crust with olive oil and grill on low direct heat for a couple of minutes. I add the sauce and toppings and grill on medium indirect heat rotating often until done.
For better, easier to do crusts:
Trader Joes has pizza crust dough, tastes like fresh bread dough, 99 cents.
Our local bakery saves us some dough if we call a day in advance.
Okay. For the uninitiated who’s kinda interested in tackling a homemade pizza-- why use pizza stone? And what’s a “peel”?
I make decent sauces for spaghetti from a mix of canned tomato pastes, herbs, red onions (Vidalia if they’re in season), peppers, mushrooms, little sugar and cooking wine. I’m sure I can adapt this recipe for pizza.
A pizza stone heats the underside of the pizza at a consistent rate. Clay and brick ovens distribute the heat evenly, but who has one of those in their house? Conventional home ovens have wild temperature fluctuations in them, which is why the edge is sometimes burnt while the middle is still cold.
So what’s a “peel?” Something like wax paper to keep it from sticking to the stone?
You could try it without any sauce at all, or just use some very drained tomatoes. Cooking the pepporoni in advance will, as noted earlier, reduce the grease factor. I like dehydrated mushrooms on mine; they’ll soak up juices and have a different texture.
OR, just build a 15-20 pound pizza with about six meats, six kinds of cheese (including chunks just wedged into the body), four olives, spinach, etc. etc. Liberally douse everything with hot sauce. Serve in cubes.
The “peel,” I think, is that wooden shuffleboard-looking thingy that you put the pizza on and then slide onto your preheated pizza stone. Before placing the pizza on the peel, I think you sprinkle the peel with a little corn meal to prevent sticking.
Note: avoid washing your peel, as doing so can cause it to warp.
Get pizza stone or tiles (per Dr J) Put them on the BOTTOM rack of the oven (not per Dr J–there’s more than enough heat at the bottom to melt the cheese, but you want the crust as close to the heat source as possible)
Make Pizza–
Dough recipe makes about 3 12" pizzas and can be frozen
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3 1/4 cups white flour
1 package (about 2 teaspoons) yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
3 teasppons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon fresh chopped rosemary
Dump the yeast and sugar into a mixing bowl with about 1/3d cup very warm water (about 100 degrees F). Stir and let it get bubbly.
Dump the wheat flour in and mix. Add the olive oil. Mix. Add about 1 cup of ice-cold water (yes. Ice-cold water. It’ll make the crust take forever to rise and will make the crust taste delicious.) Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix. Add more water if needed. Knead for about 10 minutes. Roll dough into ball and smear lightly with olive oil and place in bowl. Place bowl on counter or someplace room temperature. Cover bowl with towel and let rise until doubled, which, as noted before, will take at least 3 hours, probably four. Drink several beers.
When the dough’s risen, turn the oven on as high as it’ll go.
Cut the into 3 pieces. Freeze the other two individually (let 'em thaw in the fridge for about 8 hours when you intend to use 'em) Roll remaing dough into a ball and let sit for about 10 minutes. Roll it into a circle on your peel or on the back of a large baking sheet (that have been sprinkled with flour) until it’s about 1/4th of an inch thick. If it’s too rubbery and keeps shrinking, let it sit about 10 minutes and try again.
Once it’s about 12 inches around (leave a rim around the edge!) and about 1/4 inch thick (or less), take a dab of olive oil (less than 1/4 teaspoon) and gently smear it all over the top of the pizza crust (it’ll prevent the sauce from sinking in and making the crust soggy). Spread your tomato sauce (make home-made or use jarred spaghetti sauce (Bertolli/4 Brothers is a good brand, IMO) Canned sauce just tastes weird to me…I think it’s the metal) thinly on the crust, you don’t want to use more than a 1/4 of a cup, if that. Put slices of mozzerella cheese (make sure it’s “real” mozzerella cheese, not “processeed cheez flavored foodstuff”–best bet is to go to the deli in your supermarket and ask for about 1/4th pound of sliced mozzerella). Add other ingredients–be careful of mushrooms, tomatoes and pineapple as they give off liquid when cooked and can make things soggy.
Once the pizza’s topped, let it sit for about 5-10 minutes more if you like a chewier crust or don’t if you want a crisper crust. Slide the pizza onto your pizza stone, wait 8-10 minutes and pull it out. Let it rest on the counter for about 3-5 minutes (so that all the molten cheese doesn’t just run off–it’s gotta congeal a bit) and devour!
Fenris
Cornstarch or cornmeal?
Make it from scratch, it takes me 1 3/4 hrs from beginning to eating it. Just try it once, it won’t take that much more time than it takes you now.
Dough:
3 C flour
2 T yeast in 1 C warm water w/little sugar
little olive oil
let the yeast sit for 5 minutes/get foamy, dump it in flour, knead and when done, put it back in the bowl, drizzle w/olive oil. Cover with a towel or saran wrap and put it in a barely warm oven, and let rise 45-60 minutes. Takes a little practice. Take out and roll it out on a cookie sheet, no need for a stone.
Toppings, your choice. Fresh ingredients like mushrooms will lose their water and it will sit right there on your pizza. Take the water out before, or use canned.
I skip the mozzarella. 30 seconds after taking it out of the oven, it’s a big glob of hard, tasteless cheese. or make sure it’s good, fresh stuff and has some TASTE.
The one I make usually has fresh spinach and gorgonzola cheese chunks on it. A little tyme. onion if you want. and sauce, take someones recipe for sauce from above.
OR Try incanestrata or fontina grated up. mmm… 500 degrees for about 9-10 minutes and it’s ready.
(whoops) Neither!
The only reason people use cornmeal on their pizza “peels” is because they think that it is the only way to keep the pizza dough from sticking to the wooden paddle. This is because they do not have the experience of how a traditional pizza is made.
When you bake bread dough in a bread pan the dough is wet and slightly sticky. No problem. Now, the difference with pizza is this, take that same ball of bread dough and completely cover it with flour. The dough ball should be quite dusty. Use rolling pin or your hands and flatten out the ball, add more flour wherever you find a moist spot on the dough. The dough should at all times be able to slide around on the counter.
The flour particles act like little ‘Buckyballs’ to keep the friction between the dough and pizza peel to almost zero. As you pile on the ingredients a small back and forth jiggle will ensure that the dough has not had time to settle on the peel and stick, in proffessional pizza kitchens the pizza is topped very quickly for just this reason. The handle of the paddle can be jiggled between the thumb and forefinger and the paddle will rotate in a circular motion with the center of the circle the center of the pizza. This way the pizza isn’t accidently slid right off the paddle. Watch it done sometime. It should only take about 10-30 seconds. This is why pizza cooks need all the ingredients right in front of them all ready to go.
I realize that some people have a nostalgic fondness for the taste of burnt cornmeal on the bottom of their pizza but I find the gritty, ashen residue to take away from the enjoyment of my pizza.
By the way, this thread inspired me to make a few pizzas this weekend. My 13 year old stepson now says that I make as good a pizza as Pappa John’s, that’s high praise from his perspective!
mmmm. Homemade pizza. The smell of this thread brought me out of lurkdom.
Really just to second (third) some of the great advice you’ve already gotten:
For the love of god, make your own dough and sauce. Both are very easy and less is usually more.
I use the flying ferment method for dough. This is so easy, you’ll kick yourself for ever buying prepared crust:
Add tsp of dry yeast and
tsp of sugar to about a
cup of lukewarm water.
Walk away and come back 5 minutes later. (that’s about 1 post)
Add a cup of flour, stir and walk away for another 15 minutes. (3 posts, or a good, long back-read)
Add tsp salt
2 or 3 glugs of olive oil
and start adding flour while you stir.
Once the dough is too hard to stir with a spoon, Pick it out and start kneading while you keep adding flour.
After about 10 minutes, you should have a nice, soft ball of dough that feels not unlike a breast.
Stop playing with it and put it someplace warm to rest. (I usually put it in the microwave with the door cracked. The little light in there heats up the inside space just enough to make bread rise nicely.)
Sauce is also really easy, but I think you’ve gotten enough advice there.
The other ‘must’ is heat. You must have a surface hot enough to make the bottom crust crispy yet oven temp low enough not to fry the cheese.
If you can’t afford to have a brick oven installed, get a good pizza stone. Not those little wafers they sell at Pampered Chef parties, but a thick, heavy stone from a restaurant supply store…I got mine at Macy’s about 15 years ago and it’s nearly a full inch thick.
I preheat the oven with stone inside to 450 degrees and let it heat for almost an hour. The radiant heat off the stone is what will make a good pie, not the heat of the oven.
I take the hot stone out of the oven and prepare the pizza right on it. The crust is nearly baked by the time I pop it in, and then I just turn the heat down to 400 and let the dough rise and the cheese melt.
My husband was born and raised in Brooklyn, and he would put our pizza up against the best pie joint in NYC.
Enjoy!