People love pizza. This dish, which is essentially a part of Italian cuisine, has become popular across the globe. Different people have different preferences when it comes to their favorite pizzas, toppings, crusts, etc. While some may prefer a thick-crust pizza that is chewy, others may prefer it extremely thin and crispy.
People even love making pizzas at home. However, this can often be a challenge, especially if you are planning to make a thin-crusted pizza. Usually, when people cook at home, getting a perfectly thin and crispy pizza can be difficult. To solve this problem, we bring you the top 12 hacks to make an extra thin-crust pizza at home. Now go ahead and fulfil all your pizza fantasies with our guide.
Use a rolling pinÂ
A lot of cooks usually prefer to use their floured hands to spread out pizza dough. This is the number one mistake they make in achieving a perfectly crispy pizza. A rolling pin can work wonders when you are making a thin-crust pizza at home. Use the pin to roll the pizza from the middle outwards to get the perfect thin crust you want.
Swap your pizza dough for tortillasÂ
This is a very recent hack that is going viral. A tortilla is a thin Mexican flatbread. They are the ideal and super quick way of getting easy thin crust pizzas at home. You don’t have to put in any extra effort and you will get a paper-thin pizza with a cracker-like crust that is of the same quality and tastes as a restaurant-made pizza.
Dust your pizza dough off with semolina to get that extra crispinessÂ
Dusting your pizza dough with semolina instead of regular flour is another hack that can make your pizza crust extra crispy. Just use semolina generously when rolling out your pizzas to get that extra bit of crunchiness.
For the best thin crust pizza, make sure you skip the pizza dough’s first rise.
If you use your regular pizza dough that contains a huge amount of yeast, you won’t be able to prevent it from rising. That’s how your pizza dough will become a thick-crust pizza instead of a thin-crust one. So, make sure you add less yeast and skip the rise between kneading and shaping. This will save you a lot of cooking time, and the yeast in your pizza will be less plentiful.
Bake in a dark pan.
For the perfect thin-crust pizza, make sure you bake it in a dark pan. This will distribute the heat most evenly and efficiently. Your crust will be brown at the bottom and crispy all the way through. These are the qualities that make a perfect thin-crust pizza. For this, it is important that you preheat your oven thoroughly. The temperature to cook pizza should be set at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 30 minutes.
Use the right flour Â
Choosing the right quality flour to make your pizza dough can have a lot of effect on your final product. Bread flour is a good choice because it has a high protein content. Moreover, all-purpose flour is the ideal choice for any pizza.
Roll out your crust extra thin.
This hack is extremely important and effective. It is important that you roll out your pizza dough super thin, so that when it bakes, it stays crispy and crunchy. Place it on a piece of greasy parchment and roll it away to make sure you get the thinnest crust.
Add flavor to your crust.
Many times, when people bake thin-crust pizza, they complain that their pizza tastes bland or “cardboard-like”. This usually happens because it is the yeast that helps your pizza bread become more flavorsome. However, the yeast doesn’t get enough time to do so when you cut back on the rising time. So, to make sure that you get that extra bit of flavor into your favorite pizza, spread olive oil over your un-topped crust with a few bits of garlic.
Don’t add too many toppings.
Make sure that you use a minimum amount of sauce on your thin-crust pizza. If you add too much sauce, the pizza crust beneath it will drown and get soggy, losing all its crispiness. Don’t pile on too many toppings to your thin-crust pizza, either. This will overpower the taste of the pizza bread.
Cold-fermenting the pizza,
Place your dough in the refrigerator for 24 to 72 hours to “ferment” or “cure.” This is referred to as “cold-fermenting.” The refrigerator is used to slow down the dough’s fermentation, allowing that distinctive flavor to come through, that many-a-times goes missing.
Use a pizza stone.
Using a pizza stone can often do wonders for your pizza. A pizza stone is usually made of wood, and it makes sure that heat is evenly distributed throughout your pizza. Like a dark pan, a pizza stone can also make your thin-crust pizzas crispier.
For those who crave a crispy crust, it is important that you par-bake your pizza dough first.
This means partially cooking the crust before putting sauce, cheese, and toppings on it. You can adapt any pizza recipe to par-baking. Make and roll out the dough as normal, and preheat the oven and cook for half of the time on the recipe (so if the recipe says to cook for 16 minutes, cook for 8 minutes). Then pull out the crust from the oven, top it with whatever you want, and put it back into the oven for the other half of the cooking time
