Tips for Making Good Pizza

High Oven Temperature: Preheat your oven at the highest possible temperature with a baking stone in it for at least 30 minutes before baking pizza; baking stones emulate brick burning ovens by drawing out moisture from the pizza crust. Traditional wood-burning (or coal-burning) pizza ovens heat up to 950°F, which ensures that pizzas bake quickly (in 2 or 3 minutes maximum) and emerge light and crispy rather than heavy and dry. A home oven can usually reach 550°F, which will bake a pizza to a crispy, crunchy, lightly brown in 5 minutes or less--provided you are using a baking stone.

Great Flour: Use a top-quality, high gluten flour--like King Arthur Sir Lancelot High Gluten Flour

Little Yeast: Use little yeast in your dough (use 1 teaspoon of instant yeast per 3 and 1/2 cups of flour) and let it rise slowly; don't add a lot of yeast, as most recipes call for, or the dough will be fluffy and soft and will taste distinctly yeasty.

San Marzano Tomatoes: Buy genuine canned Italian plum tomatoes--San Marzano are the best. In Italy, they don't cook the tomatoes before adding them to their pizzas, yielding pizzas that taste fresh and vibrant.

Go Light on the Toppings: Exercise restraint when creating toppings: in Italy, they use one or two toppings per pizza, if any (aside from tomatoes and cheese)--the result is that each ingredient brings its own personality to the pizza without fighting the other ingredients. Also, the more you load your pizza with toppings, the heavier it will be, making the crust soggy rather than crisp.

Par-bake your Crust: I learned this tip from several websites. Before adding the toppings, bake the crust on the pizza stone, or whatever you are using, just until the crust has set. Then add the toppings and finish baking. This helps tp keep the toppings from soaking through.