Learn pizza: Start here
From what pizza is to your first good pizza at home, and how to make the next one better.
- Who it is for
- Someone who has never made pizza, or has only followed a recipe without knowing why it works.
- What it assumes
- Nothing beyond a kitchen with an oven and a set of scales.
- By the end
- You can read a pizza dough formula, choose a style that suits your oven, make and shape dough, build and bake a pizza, and work out what to change when it goes wrong.
Step 1: What pizza actually is
The word covers more than one dish; start with what PizzaHQ means by it.
Step 2: The main pizza families
The handful of axes — thickness, crust, bake, fermentation — that separate every style you will meet.
Step 3: Baker's percentages
The language every dough formula is written in. Everything after this uses it.
Step 4: Flour
The ingredient everything else is measured against, and why the flour on the bag matters.
Step 5: Yeast and fermentation
What the yeast does while you wait, and why time and temperature trade against each other.
Step 6: Hydration
The single number that most changes how a dough handles and bakes.
Step 7: Kneading
How a shaggy mix becomes a dough that holds gas.
Step 8: Balling
Dividing and tightening the dough so each pizza starts even.
Step 9: Shaping
Opening a ball into a base without pressing out the gas that makes the rim rise.
Step 10: Sauce
Cooked versus raw tomato, and what each does on a pizza.
Step 11: Cheese
The two mozzarellas most pizzas use, and why they behave so differently.
Step 12: Toppings and moisture
How much to put on, and why water is the enemy of a crisp base.
Step 13: Construction order
What goes on first, and why the order changes the bake.
Step 14: Oven heat
What a home oven can and cannot do, and how to get the most from it.
Step 15: Stone, steel or pan
The surface under the pizza matters as much as the oven around it.
Step 16: Your first build guide
A forgiving same-day pan pizza that works in any home oven — a first success.
Step 17: Common failures
When something goes wrong, rank the likely causes instead of guessing.
Step 18: How to improve
The changes that make the biggest difference at home, and the ones that do not.
Step 19: Where to go next
Start from the pizza you liked and find the next one to make.