The keys to making perfect pizza at home — without a pizza oven

Welcome to Clubhouse Eats, where we celebrate the game’s most delectable food and drink. Hope you brought your appetite.

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The best bite of food at Boyne Mountain can be appropriately found inside the Trophy Room Pizzeria & Pub. That’s not a discredit to the quality of the food served elsewhere at the northern Michigan resort. Instead, it’s simply a celebration of the classic American style pizzas that the resort’s executive chef, Nic Manning, and his team of cooks have refined over the past three years.

Manning first developed a passion for crafting high-quality pizzas more than a decade ago, and since then he’s devoted time and energy to fine-tuning the details — tweaking dough recipes to deliver the perfect harmony of crispy crust and satisfactory chew; intensifying the flavor of the sauce; and narrowing in on the right cheeses to maximize flavor without compromising texture.

Best of all, Manning acknowledges that great pizzas like the ones baked every day at the Trophy Room can be replicated at home. Here, we share the chef’s tips and tricks for classic pies, ensuring that your future do-it-yourself pizza nights are something to get excited about.

Making Dough  

Don’t be overwhelmed by the thought of making pizza dough from scratch. Just start with a package of King Arthur’s pizza flour. Why King Arthur’s? According to Chef Manning, the recipe printed on the package is not only easy to execute, it produces a good finished product. Of course, the chef recommends one tweak: When you’re pouring in the warm water, add a couple of tablespoons of high-quality olive oil. “It’s got a better bite,” he explains of the finished dough. “It’s got texture, it’s got crust, but it’s not so chewy that it’s sticking together.”

The Secret’s In the Sauce

One of the most common mistakes that derails most amateur cooks’ attempts at pizzeria-quality pies is a heavy hand with the sauce. Not only that, but they use sauce that’s too wet. “Good sauce should be dry with intense flavors,” Chef Manning says. To get there, he suggests cooking down a jarred sauce, letting it simmer over low heat until it thickens. While you’re doing that, you can also fold in some grated Parmesan. “That’ll dry out your sauce,” he explains. “The cheese soaks up some of that liquid, giving more body to the sauce.”

Speaking of cheese….

Say Cheese!

You know that old adage about less being more? It applies to a pizza’s two most critical toppings, the sauce and the cheese. As Chef Manning points out, most amateurs think that loading up a pizza with layers upon layers of cheese is the best way to go, but all that cheese is actually sabotaging the quality of the end result. The top layer may get nicely browned, but the middle layers end up steaming rather than baking, which means that when they melt, they’re releasing more liquid. All that gets soaked up by the dough, and once that happens, there goes your crispy, chewy crust.

Make sure you buy good-quality cheese with low-moisture content. Manning swears by a combination of mozzarella and provolone, since the aged quality of the provolone introduces a punch of flavor. And the more flavorful the cheese, the less of it you need to use. It’s another trick to preserving the texture of the pizza’s crust. “Good food,” he says, “starts with good ingredients.”  

Hitting Rock Bottom

You don’t need a pizza oven at home to create restaurant-worthy pies. If your kitchen oven has a convection setting and the ability to reach temperatures of at least 425 degrees, you’re well on your way. All you need after that is a good-quality pizza stone.

When shopping for one, remember that size matters — the thicker the stone, the better it will be at retaining heat, which is what you need to bake a pizza with a properly crisp crust. As for how to use it most effectively, first set an oven rack to the middle position (this ensures that there’s proper airflow around the pizza as it’s cooking), then heat the stone in an oven set to convection baking with a temperature of at least 425 degrees. Once the stone is piping hot, you’re ready to transfer your pie, baking it for about 12 minutes. Just don’t rely on the look of the melted cheese on top as an indicator of when the pizza is done. Instead, use a spatula to carefully lift the dough off the stone. When it’s sufficiently brown and firmed up, you’ll know it’s ready to serve. “The real doneness of your pizza,” Manning says, “comes from checking the bottom.”