Cooking

Lots of good advice in this thread, here's one more that I discovered: spread the sauce thinner in the center of the pie. As the pie cooks the fluids will often pool in the center, so intentionally leaving the middle dry-ish can help compensate for that. I like my pizza really saucy, but I'll leave the center barely wet with sauce, and that's fine because it's only the first couple bites of the slice anyway.

Also just mind the fluids you top the pizza with. If you're doing pepperoni, then you really don't need olive oil on top of that.

425 is a little low. Pizza is all about heat, I pre-bake my crust for 7 at 450 to firm crust, then add sauce, cheese and toppings. Like many others said, a pizza stone is a huge help.

A lot of people have mentioned getting a pizza stone or steel and cooking at higher temps, and they're 100% right.

I just want to add that steel is definitely the way to go if it's in the budget - specifically, steel has more thermal mass and conducts heat better than stone.

Crust crispness is entirely a function of how much heat you're able to supply to the surface, and when baking in a standard oven (max ~500F) instead of a pizza oven (700+ F), you need all the help you can get - which means steel, preferably at least 1/4" thick.

Sticking with the tools you have, you can try preheating your pan, like you would a stone/steel, before putting the topped pizza on it.

The olive oil might be causing it to become too doughy. You don't need it (or the sugar). Both are for taste and texture. You'll likely need to fiddle with the water if you lose the oil.

I'd also recommend measuring by weight and not volume. It's more accurate. Buy yourself some cheap kitchen scales.

A pizza stone.

I've never eaten good pizza out of a household oven, so I've bought an electric pizza oven for 200 Eur.

By weight I use 60% of water compared to the flour (i. e. 500g of high protein pizza flour to 300g of water), 7g of salt and a very low amount of dry yeast. Overnight proofing in the fridge, next day I ball the dough (around 270g per pizza) and let it proof at room temp for a few hours.

Baking 3 minutes at 400°C (740F)

The investment for the oven has well paid off, as I don't order any pizza to my home, anymore. You can freeze dough balls or use more yeast for "same day dough".

Edit: Ah what nobody mentioned in the other comments (I think): The choice of flour makes a huuuuuge difference. Use pizza flour or at least a high protein flour (which has at least 12% of protein)

Everyone is right- you need a stone.

Parchment paper on the stone for the first ~5 minutes gets a crisp crust without spilling corn meal everywhere.

https://familyslice.com/parchment-paper-on-pizza-stone/

Pizza stone or steel is gonna be your friend here. Let that stone get nice and hot before you put the pizza on it (probably going to want to get a pizza peel too, personally I like a 2 peel system, I build my pizza on a wooden peel, I feel like the raw pizza slides off better, and pull it out with a metal peel which is thinner and easier to slide under the pie)

EDIT: for a little explanation, the idea with pizza stones/steels or brick ovens is that the surface you're putting the pizza on is ripping hot, and heat is going to transfer from that hot surface to the crust much more efficiently through conduction than it would on a tray in an oven rack where most of the heating is happening though convection of the hot air inside and radiation from the heating elements/burners. The stone/steel/bricks are hefty and have a lot of thermal mass so there's a lot of heat there that can transfer directly to the pizza dough, cooking it fast and getting it nice and crisp. This is also the same idea as making it in a preheated cast iron pan that someone else mentioned. Depending on the size, if you have a nice heavy griddle that would probably also work well too in place of a steel or stone. You might get some improvement preheating a baking sheet and making your pizza on that, but there's going to be a lot less mass there so it's going to lose its heat much faster.

If your stone and oven can do it, also consider cranking up the temperature even higher, pizza ovens cook at pretty high temperatures, 500-700 degrees or even higher aren't unheard of. A dedicated pizza oven is amazing if you have the space/budget for one. I have a breville pizzaillo (nice oven, probably not worth the price, I got it on a very steep discount) and it can go up to about 700 degrees, I don't usually go quite that high but I definitely set it way higher than my normal oven goes, and it cranks a pizza out in like 2 minutes.

Before I got that, I also had pretty good luck with a pizza stone on my grill, grills can also reach pretty ludicrous temperatures. I think I've also seen some dedicated pizza oven accessories come out in recent years meant to go on a regular grill. I haven't tried those myself, but they sound like a solid idea in theory.

Most jarred marinara sauce is probably a bit too wet for pizza use, you may want to try a pizza-specific sauce or make your own, or else maybe try cooking your sauce down a bit or maybe straining it depending on how watery/chunky it is.

Also be aware of what toppings you're adding that might be adding a lot of moisture and think about do what you can to minimize that. Fresh mozzarella should be used sparingly for things like a margarita pizza, for regular pizza use you want to use low moisture mozz (or a blend of other cheeses if that's your thing.) Mushrooms have a lot of moisture in them and that's often not immediately obvious to a lot of people. Some ingredients are obviously wet like pineapple (I strongly recommend grilling your pineapple if you use it, drives out some of the moisture and also tastes great) a lot of veggies have a lot of moisture and might benefit from a quick roast or saute first to dry them out a little.

You can also consider doing a red top pizza with the cheese under the sauce to act as sort of a moisture barrier. There's a couple places around the Philly suburbs I've been to that do a spiral of (usually very sweet) sauce over top of the cheese, which looks very cool if nothing else, or perhaps a layer of cheese, then sauce, then more cheese if you don't like that look

And try to avoid going too heavy on the sauce/cheese/toppings, you can definitely ever load a pizza doing that.

I am sure the serious foodies will downvote this comment but I precook the crust to prevent this. Roll out the dough and put it in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 then remove. Then just finish the pizza as you normally would.

have you got a cast iron pan? if it's still soggy, cook it longer or use a less wet sauce.

"all the veggies" bring all the moisture. Cut back or precook the wet stuff. Go easy on the sauce.

Hotter oven. I go with 500F on a steel. 5 minutes on Bake, then Broil until the top looks good.

Less sauce, and more heat. Dont cook it on a metal pan, get a stone or steel. Crank your oven up as high as it can go, and heat for 20-30m before putting the pizza in.

Also, marinara, especially the jarred kind, is not a sub for pizza sauce as there is way too much liquid. Get pizza sauce, or check seriouseats for their sauce recipe as a starter.

Edit: also, 120F is too hot for proofing yeast as it will kill it. 80-100F is more ideal.

Instead of jar sauce, do 1 can tomato paste, 1 can tomato sauce or crushed tomato, 1tbsp Italian seasoning, 1tbsp garlic powder, salt and crushed red pepper to taste. Mix it all together before you make the dough and it should be pretty flavourful by the time you're ready to cook. It's easier than reducing the jar, and gives you more personalized flavor.

If that doesn't reduce the water content enough, try adding just a touch more flour to the dough.

The simple option is pre-cook it a bit.

But also worth trying pizza sauce, as it usually has less water in it.

My immediate reaction would be to go for a thinner crust and to use a little less sauce. I definitely wouldn't oil before sauce, but reducing the sauce could help if it's a pretty thin sauce.

You should dry your vegetables and press all the water out of them with a paper towel. And I mean you need to press them pretty hard and get the maximum amount of water out. You could par bake your crust if it’s still soggy even after drying your veggies. Another way is to make a cast iron pizza where you start the pizza for the first two minutes on the stove top while it’s in the cast iron pan and put it in the oven for the remainder of the time (15min at 500)

Hope this helps

I cook mine for 35min at 180°C like a fucking heathen

Light olive oil on the crust before topping with sauce. Corn meal or corn meal/salt mixture under the crust to help absorb moisture trapped underneath. Perforated pans also help. I also cook at a higher temperature. 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure to preheat. A brick oven or pizza stone will help with consistent heating.