10 Things I Learned Making Hundreds of Pizzas for My Cookbook

You might know Alexandra Stafford as the award-winning author of Bread Toast Crumbs and creator of the popular blog Alexandra's Kitchen, and if you're one of her 1 million Instagram followers, you know she's also a pizza devotee.

With her latest cookbook Pizza Night: Deliciously Doable Recipes for Pizza and Salad, Stafford pays homage to all things dough, sauce and toppings. Pizza anchors some of Stafford's most formative moments: there was the standing Friday pizza night that gave her a predictable meal amid her parents' divorce, the local pizza parlor where she and her family celebrated birthdays, and the comforting predictability of making dough throughout the pandemic. In fact, it was during the pandemic that the idea for Pizza Night came about.

"It was more than just pizza night once a week, and I started getting bored with various pairings," Stafford says. She polled her Instagram followers to see if anyone else needed pizza inspo, and the response was a resounding yes. Stafford got to work formulating four types of pizza dough —Neapolitanish, Thin-Crust, Pan and Gluten-Free—and dreaming up 52 different pizza and salad pairings. "There's no better meal to me than pizza and salad. I never get sick of it," Stafford says.

After making hundreds of pizzas — though Stafford estimates that that number could be as high as 1,000 — she gleaned a ton of tips and tricks for making better pizza at home. Here's her best intel.

To come up with the 52 different pizza and salad pairings, Stafford found that focusing on the seasons was key. "I knew I had to come up with 13 pairings per season," she says. "Then I really focused on hyper seasonal veggies. It was a matter of balancing – if a pizza has meat, I don't want to have meat in the salad or the salad should be on the lighter side." To balance the flavors, Stafford would think: "what grows together, goes together." The book's recipes are divided into four seasons, like a standout Asparagus Pizza with Crème Fraîche and Whipped Ricotta flanked by a Fennel Salad with Citrus, Olives, and Parmesan for spring (Stafford leans on crème fraiche as a ready-made sauce for white pies).

Although Stafford grew up on cheesy, greasy slices, as an adult she's come to appreciate a minimally topped pie. One of Stafford's go-to pizzerias is BAR in New Haven, Connecticut, which serves one of her favorites, a white pizza with clams. "It's not very cheesy, it's light and lemony and so flavorful. That was eye opening to me," she says. Next, she discovered Neapolitan-style pizzas in D.C. "I'd never had a poofy rimmed pizza, and I was blown away by how you can taste the sauce," she says. In Italy, she fell in love with tonda, a very thin, lightly topped pizza. "When people make pizza at home, they will often put too much cheese and sauce and then the crust is soggy," Stafford says. "Using fewer toppings will improve your crust and the balance of flavors."

Stafford says pizza making is a practice. When finalizing the recipes for Pizza Night, Stafford had testers from all over the country make the dough which meant that the recipe turned out differently depending on their environment. "It's learning to recognize the visual cues, particularly with baking," she says. Stafford says to look for nice even browning on the outer rim, or with thin crust pizza, some charring on the very outer edge; nicely melted cheese that's perhaps starting to blister; caramelization on the vegetables and meat; and some nice browning and spotting on the pizza's undercarriage. "There's no right way to do it. It's about finding what works for you given your taste and preferences and your environment and the ingredients you have on hand."

If you tend to over-top your pizzas, Stafford says that weighing and measuring ingredients is helpful for ensuring that your crust doesn't get soggy, at least until you get a feel for it. “I always weigh the amount of cheese I put on my pizza," Stafford says. "3 ounces for Neapolitan, 4 ounces for thin crust. I eye the sauce and toppings." Weighing your flour is also crucial when it comes to making dough, so Stafford recommends a digital scale. "It's the only way to ensure you're measuring accurately and in turn, the only way to make meaningful adjustments," she says. "Depending on the environment and the flour you're using, you may need to use a little less or more water."

"So many good things happen to your dough if you give it the time," Stafford says. "There are enzymes in flour and yeast that, over time, convert the starches into sugars. That sugar contributes to flavor and to browning, and that's a big challenge in a home oven." Stafford recommends allowing 10 to 12 hours for the initial rise, then shaping the dough balls and giving them additional time to relax in the fridge so that they're easier to stretch out after they come to room temperature. "When I had dough balls in the fridge for 2 days, that was the sweet spot of texture, airiness, poofiness and color. But they'll last for up to a week and you'll still get excellent results." If you're going the storebought pizza dough route, Stafford says to let it sit at room temperature for much longer than suggested — 3 to 4 hours, if not longer — so that you're not wrestling with it and it doesn't shrink once baked.

Several recipes in the book call for parbaking the crust, including the Detroit-style and Sicilian pizzas. But parbaking is also listed in the troubleshooting section of Pizza Night as a way to counteract soft or soggy crusts. "Par-baking is an underutilized technique that really helps the home cook because the trouble with making pizza at home is that our ovens just don't get hot enough. They only get up to 500 degrees and it might even be less," she says. "Even with a Neapolitan-style or thin crust, parbaking it without any toppings for 60 to 90 seconds, it just sets the crust, gives it a little bit of crispness and then once you top it, a lot of people are much happier with the crust."

Stafford says that the single most important tool you need for making better pizza at home is a baking steel. As she writes in Pizza Night, "A baking steel is similar to a baking stone or pizza stone, but is a better conductor of heat, as steel transfers heat to the dough faster, which in turn causes the dough to spring in the oven, leading to glorious bubbles throughout. Steel also retains heat better than stone, so it will help keep your oven at the proper temperature as you open and close it while launching and removing pizzas." Stafford recommends the Original Baking Steel by the company Baking Steel. If you don't have a baking steel or a pizza stone, Stafford recommends using an old sheet pan and turning it upside down.

Stafford loves thinking about how her favorite dishes can inspire a pizza. "When people are familiar with an idea they're more likely to try it. Hearing 'spinach artichoke pizza,' you think 'that sounds good, because I love spinach artichoke dip.'" There are pizzas inspired by family recipes, like her mom's spanakopita, which is topped with spinach, feta and eggs; sandwiches, such as the Sausage Pizza with Grilled Onions and Peppers, which pays homage hot Italian sausages in crusty hoagie rolls; and even salad, like the Niçoise-Inspired Salad with Blistered Green Beans pizza, replete with cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, onions and herbs.

Stafford suspects that one of the most divisive recipes in her book will be the one topped with mashed potato and bacon, inspired by one of New Haven pizzeria BAR's most well-known pies. "I had to try it of course and it was just delicious," Stafford says. "It's one of those things you just have to try it to trust it." Rumor has it that the pizzeria had leftover mashed potatoes from a Thanksgiving dinner so they parlayed it into a homey, comforting pizza topping. Which begs the question: why not keep pizza dough on hand so you can employ it for using up leftovers, instead of making a salad or grain bowl? "Pizza is such a great vehicle for leftovers and for clearing out the fridge. If you have a little bit of roasted chicken, a little bit of leftover roasted cauliflower…pair that with some pickled peppers that you have on hand and a little bit of sauce or crème fraîche. You can so quickly make something delicious with the little odds and ends you have in your fridge."