About
The Pizza Craft is a guide to making pizza at home written by people who actually do it. We cover regional styles, dough and fermentation, ovens and equipment, sauce and toppings, and technique, with explanations rooted in how the dough actually works, not in the affiliate-mill listicles that dominate the SERP.
What you’ll find here
- Regional styles: Neapolitan, New York, Detroit, Sicilian, Roman, Chicago deep dish, New Haven, grandma pies. Each one done the way it’s supposed to be done. We explain what makes each style distinct, why the dough hydration matters, what fat to use, what oven temperature to target, and what to skip.
- Dough and fermentation: hydration math (60% vs 65% vs 70% by weight), cold fermentation timelines (24-hour, 48-hour, 72-hour, what each gets you), 00 flour vs bread flour vs all-purpose, sourdough starter for pizza, and the no-yeast emergency dough.
- Ovens and equipment: head-to-head reviews of Ooni Karu vs Koda vs Volt, Gozney Roccbox, Baking Steel, pizza stones, pizza peels, infrared thermometers. Every pan and oven we recommend, we own and have cooked on.
- Sauce and toppings: tomato sauce that has flavor (San Marzano vs domestic, raw vs cooked, the salt question), fresh mozzarella that doesn’t soak the crust, pepperoni that cups properly, the technique behind making each component good.
- Technique: stretching dough without tearing it, launching from a peel without the slide-and-burn disaster, baking timing, finishing with olive oil and fresh basil at the right moment.
Our editorial stance
Pizza content online is full of two flavors: affiliate-mill 10-best lists that have never seen an actual Ooni Karu in person, and recipe-blog posts that copy each other without testing. We try to do better:
- Show the technique. Hydration is a percentage, not a feeling. A 65% hydration dough has 65g of water per 100g of flour, by weight. Knowing this lets you fix a wet dough by adding flour or a dry dough by adding water, instead of guessing.
- Pressure-test the styles. Detroit-style pizza is not just rectangular pizza. It’s a focaccia-like dough, cheese pulled to the edge, sauce on top of the cheese, baked in a steel pan. We explain what each piece does.
- Test the gear we recommend. Buying guides are head-to-head comparisons of ovens we own and have cooked on, not affiliate links bolted onto generic top-10 lists.
- Cite testing when we can. America’s Test Kitchen, Serious Eats, Kenji López-Alt, and pizza-specialist sources (PMQ Pizza Magazine, Modernist Pizza). We say where the claim comes from.
Who writes here
Two editors, each owning a side of the pizza. See the authors page for full bios.
- Marco Bellini covers regional styles, dough and fermentation, sauce and toppings, and technique. The how-it’s-made side.
- Rachel Park covers ovens and equipment. The gear and buying-guide side.
Affiliate disclosure
When you buy a pizza oven, pizza steel, or any other product through one of our recommendation links, we may earn a small commission at no cost to you. See our full affiliate disclosure for the details. We only recommend ovens and gear we’ve cooked on.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or “you got this wrong” emails: hello@thepizzacraft.com. We update articles when we learn we got something wrong, and we credit the reader who flagged it.