The Science of Perfect Pizza and Why Yours Isn’t Quite Right
Universal as it is in the world, pizza is profoundly loved. But this beloved food is murder to sashimi if you attempt to create it from scratch at home. Here’s why. The components must be clean, pure, and at their best; the yin-yang relationship of the dough and sauce is critical (and, mostly, you’ll likely screw it up if you rely on standard recipes); the dough must be a particular texture and flavor; the sauce must have a certain set of taste components and must not be too watery; and the cheese must be the best you can find. You tubes, Pinterest, and various Italian brigade test kitchen secret passphrases are at the ready to help you attempt homemade pizza a few times before you call in the pizza delivery person once more.
That brings us to an interesting question. What actually makes a pizza good? Is it the components? The oven? The method of assembly? Or is it something even more basic and underappreciated—something fundamental about heat, chemistry, and physics?
To determine the answer, we must deconstruct pizza into its most fundamental parts.
Why Some Cheese Melts Better Than Others
One of the defining characteristics of a good pizza is how stretchy the melted cheese is. But not all cheeses stretch. Mozzarella has the best balance of moisture, fat, and protein to melt into long, gooey strands. Parmesan melts poorly, while Gouda and cheddar do pretty well, melting uniformly but without the same stretch.
This can be boiled down to how cheesy proteins act when they’re heated. As we crank up the heat, light and moisture escape from proteins. But if a cheese is too dry, it won’t do that stretchy, gooey thing we expect when melting cheese and might even burn instead.
It is intriguing that various kinds of pizza utilize cheese in different ways. A traditional Neapolitan pizza has the cheese positioned beneath the toppings. Moisture is kept trapped more efficiently when the toppings are on top of the cheese. An American-style pizza has the cheese placed on top of the toppings, where it can brown and develop flavors more efficiently.
So what is superior? It hinges on what you desire. If it’s stretch, go with mozzarella. If it’s sharpness, go with parmesan or aged cheddar. And if you can’t decide, blending those two kinds of cheese and thereby combining their properties is a perfectly good approach, too.
The Secret to a Crispy Yet Chewy Crust
If you have ever attempted to roll out pizza dough and found it kept snapping back, you can blame gluten. When flour is mixed with water, proteins in the flour bind together and form an elastic network. This is what gives the dough its structure. But that elasticity also makes it hard to stretch the dough unless it has been allowed to rest.
Pizza dough made by professionals is frequently allowed to undergo fermentation for a period of 1 to 2 days. Enzymes break down proteins in the dough, rendering it more extensible and shapeable. Meanwhile, fermentation also produces gas. The light, airy pockets in top-notch pizza crust? Blame (and thank) the gas.
Yet here is the crux of the homemade pizza conundrum: temperature. A classic pizza oven cooks at over 800°F (425°C). Your oven at home, even cranked up to its absolute limit, is probably not much hotter than 500°F (260°C). And this alters the whole scenario.
When you bake pizza in a professional oven, intense heat evaporates water so quickly that it nearly instantaneously crisps the bottom of the crust while keeping the inside tender. In a home oven, the pizza may be baked longer, which often can mean that the inside can become dry before it ever gets crisp.
How does one go about remedying this? One way is a pizza stone or steel. These materials absorb and retain heat far better than a regular baking tray. Preheat them long enough, and they mimic the effect of a high-temperature pizza oven—that is, creating a crust in a shorter amount of time and a crispier crust.
The Science of Sauce and Why it’s Often Used Raw
The primary sauce used on the majority of pizzas is uncooked. This may seem odd, given that we typically cook tomato-based sauces to develop flavor. But cooking the tomatoes actually mellows their acidity and alters their molecular structure, making the flavor of cooked (and even canned) tomatoes taste sweeter and less vibrant than their fresh, uncooked counterparts.
The heat of the oven itself cooks the sauce on a pizza. Using uncooked tomato sauce preserves its natural acidity, which helps balance and cut the richness of the cheese and dough. Adding olive oil, garlic, and herbs intensifies the flavor of the sauce almost without making the sauce taste a little too sweet.
Nevertheless, one more thing associated with sauce is structure. Why does this matter? Pizza requires a specific amount of sauce for the crust to cook properly. If you use too much sauce, the sauce will start to affect the crust. The way it will affect the crust is that it will make the crust soggy. And if the crust is soggy, then it’s not a pizza. And also, in that case, we might as well cut the piece into a rectangle and serve it with a fork and knife.
Toppings and the Moisture Problem
Every topping added to a pizza affects how the pizza bakes. High-moisture vegetables—like mushrooms, spinach, and peppers—release a lot of water when they’re heated. If those watery vegetables are packed on in too generous amounts, they can’t help the pizza bake right. Instead of a half-baked, no-crust-please, pizza sub that might emerge from your oven, you should aim for something like the a few-slices-able, a fully-formed crust that you’re going to want to pick up and chow down.
Toppings can be better pre-cooked for some pizzas. For example, mushrooms, when cooked, lose a lot of their water. This helps them not to add situationally inappropriate moisture that could affect the crust and overall soggy factor of the final product. Similarly, cooking meats before adding them to a pizza can ensure they don’t add too much grease to the top of the final product.
However, another question is just as interesting: What effect do toppings have on taste? Studies have shown that the flavors’ distribution across the pizza is just as important as the ingredients themselves. When a pizza has too many toppings, the individual flavors get lost. A simpler pizza—with fewer, but higher-quality, kinds of ingredients—often tastes better because each component can stand out and be recognized.
The Final Step That Changes Everything
The last few minutes of baking are key. This is when the cheese browns, the toppings settle, and the crust achieves its final texture. The high heat at this stage elicits the Maillard reaction, a process that increases flavor by generating hundreds of new aromatic compounds.
Yet most people give little thought to this: How pizza is eaten affects the way it tastes. Gravity does the work when you lift a slice; it naturally pulls the toppings toward the center and changes the bite structure. The crust’s crunch contrasts with the soft middle; this is an optimal texture balance. But if you eat pizza with a fork and knife, you lose that balance—you’re not experiencing the crust, the toppings, and the sauce as a cohesive whole.
This is the reason pizza, more so than numerous other foods, offers a structural experience. The sequence of ingredients, the heat, the manner of slicing—each of these influences the ultimate taste sensation.
So… What Makes the Perfect Pizza?
As it happens, there’s no one answer. Various pizza styles optimize different variables. Neapolitan pizza is made for high-temperature baking. It has a soft, chewy crust. A New York slice is crisp, yet foldable. Chicago deep-dish is more about layering and density than quick cooking.
One thing is certain, however. A superb pizza is not merely about the components—the toppings, if you will. It is about the way in which heat, moisture, and chemical interactions react to form something greater than the mere sum of its parts.
If you grasp those fundamentals, you can throw together a pizza in your own kitchen that is not merely enjoyable to eat but is, by the laws of nature, the best pizza it can be.
