Most homemade pizza has the same problem.
By the time the bottom is crisp and the crust has some color, the cheese has gone flat and greasy. Browned, oily, a little sad. You waited for the crust and the cheese paid the price.
There's a way around it, and it's simpler than it sounds. You bake the pizza in two steps and you add the cheese late. That's the whole trick. You get a shatter-crisp thin crust and soft white pools of mozzarella that look like little clouds.
Here's how to do it at home.
What We're Going For
Think of the flat, wood-fired thin-crust pies you see at the great New York and New Jersey spots. Not a puffy Neapolitan with a big airy rim. Flat, edge to edge, crisp enough that you can eat a whole one yourself. Char around the edge. And soft, creamy cheese instead of browned cheese.
That soft cheese is the part almost nobody teaches. Most recipes have you load everything on at once and bake it through. That browns the cheese. Beautiful in its own way, but it's a different pizza. If you want the creamy white look, you add the cheese in the last two minutes. We'll get there.
Start With the Dough
You want a dough that's been fermenting for a few days. This is where the flavor lives. A one-day dough will work and it'll look great, but a dough that's had five or six days in the fridge tastes like something a one-day dough can't touch. Fermentation is a flavor lever. Time does the work.
If you're mixing your own, a simple, reliable recipe is 500 grams of flour, 350 grams of water, 16 grams of sea salt, and 1 gram of yeast. Mix it, let it sit at room temperature for 24 hours, then move it to the fridge. You can use it any time after that first day. Day one, day three, day five, all good. It just gets more flavorful as it goes.
Use a bread flour with a high protein content if you can. It holds up to a long fermentation without falling apart, and it gives you a crust with real structure. Organic is worth it.
Here's the key difference for thin crust: use a smaller dough ball. For a normal pizza you might use a 250-gram ball. For thin crust, go to about 130 to 150 grams. That's roughly half. That smaller ball is what lets you go thin without tearing, and it's what keeps the crust flat instead of puffy. Less dough means less rise. That's the point.
If you'd rather skip the measuring, our 72-hour dough pack makes about seven thin-crust pizzas and holds a long ferment beautifully. Same organic flour, everything dialed in, just add water. For this pizza I pushed the dough to six days, which makes it a little stickier and harder to handle, but the flavor is off the charts.
Preheat the Steel. Really Preheat It.
Put your Baking Steel on an upper rack and set the oven to 500°F. Then wait at least an hour.
This is the step people rush, and it's the one that matters most. You're not just heating the surface. You're driving heat deep into the mass of the steel so it has energy to give when a cold, wet pizza lands on it. Twenty minutes gets the surface hot. It doesn't get the inside hot. Give it a full hour and you'll feel the difference in the first bite.
Stretch It Thin
Flour your surface with a mix of regular flour and semolina. Semolina acts like tiny ball bearings, which is going to matter in a minute when you launch.
Take your dough ball out. Older, well-fermented dough is sticky, so keep it moving and keep it floured. Press it out from the center. For a normal pizza you'd protect the air bubbles. For thin crust, do the opposite. Push the bubbles out toward the edge so the middle stays flat.
Because it's thin crust, you're allowed to cheat here. Grab a rolling pin, or a wine bottle if that's what's handy, and roll it out. Get it to about an eighth of an inch. Thin enough that it's almost translucent. This is the one style where a rolling pin is your friend.
The Launch Setup Is Everything
Move the stretched dough onto a wood peel that you've dusted well with semolina. Wood is better than metal here because this dough carries a lot of moisture, and the wood helps wick it away so the dough doesn't glue itself down.
Before you add a single thing, make sure the dough slides. Give the peel a little shake. It should move like a hockey puck. If a spot is stuck, lift it and throw some semolina underneath. This is the most important checkpoint in the whole process. If it doesn't slide now, it will not slide once it's loaded with sauce, and you'll have a mess welded to your peel.
If you tear a hole while stretching, don't sauce over it. The sauce will seep through and stick. Instead, pinch a little dough over the hole and patch it. A quick bit of surgery saves the whole pizza.
Sauce It, Edge to Edge
Keep the sauce simple. Good crushed or whole peeled tomatoes and a pinch of sea salt. That's it. No cooking, no reducing. Taste a few brands and find the one you love, but don't overthink it. Whole peeled tomatoes that you crush by hand give you a brighter red than pre-crushed, if you want that look.
For this style, go a little heavier than you think, and take the sauce almost to the edge. Not over it, but close. Work quickly. The longer a wet, thin dough sits on the peel, the more it wants to stick. Sauce it and move.
Give the peel one more shake to confirm it still slides. Then launch.
Here's the Two-Step Part
Switch your oven to broil. The broiler pushes the surface of the steel past where a normal 500°F bake can take it, and that extra heat is what gives you char on a thin crust.
Launch the pizza with no cheese. Just sauce. Bake it under the broiler for about two minutes.
That's the part that surprises people. We're baking the crust first, on its own, so it can set and char without the cheese overcooking. Two minutes under the broiler and you'll have what looks like a tomato pie, with the edges starting to blister and char.
Pull it out. The bottom won't be fully done yet, and that's exactly right.
Now the Cheese, and Why Late Changes Everything
Take a ball of fresh mozzarella and tear it into chunks by hand. Tearing gives you uneven, oblong pieces that melt into distinct pools. Slicing gives you a uniform sheet. For this look, tear it.
If your mozzarella came packed in water, blot it dry with a paper towel first so it doesn't flood the pizza.
Scatter six or so chunks across the pie. No pattern, no need to cover every inch. Add a little drizzle of olive oil. Then put it back on the same steel, switch the oven off broil and back to convection bake at 500°F, and give it about two more minutes.
Here's why this matters. Cheese added at the start bakes the whole time, spreads out, and browns. Cheese added in the last two minutes barely has time to do anything but melt. It softens into tight white pools with no color. That's the creamy, cloud-like mozzarella you see on the best pies. Same cheese, completely different result, and the only variable is when it went on.
Neither way is wrong. Cheese from the start is the classic browned look. Cheese added late is the soft white look. Now you know how to get either one on purpose.
Thin crust magherita with cheese added midbake.
Pull It and Finish
Four minutes, start to finish. Two under the broiler with just sauce, two on convection with the cheese. Pull it when the bottom is crisp and the cheese is just melted.
Tear some fresh basil over the top. A last little drizzle of olive oil. That's it.
You'll have a thin, crisp, flat pizza with char around the edge and soft white pools of mozzarella. It looks like it came out of a wood-fired oven, and it came out of your kitchen in four minutes.
Don't Want the Char?
Some people love the black blistered spots. Some don't. If you want to skip them, just don't use the broiler. Bake the whole thing on convection at 500°F instead. You'll lose the char and keep everything else. Dealer's choice.
And if you want the steel even hotter for the launch without the char, you can run the broiler while it preheats and then switch it off the moment the pizza goes in. You get the extra surface heat for the launch without cooking under the broiler the whole time.
The Short Version
Small dough ball, around 130 to 150 grams. Roll it thin. Make sure it slides before it goes anywhere. Sauce it edge to edge and launch with no cheese. Two minutes under the broiler. Add torn mozzarella. Two minutes on convection bake. Basil, oil, done.
The two things most people miss are the smaller dough ball, which keeps it flat, and the late cheese, which keeps it creamy. Get those two right and the rest takes care of itself.
About Andris
I'm Andris Lagsdin, and I invented the Baking Steel in 2012 after reading one line in Modernist Cuisine: "Steel conducts heat better than stone." My family had run Stoughton Steel for over 50 years, so I grabbed a slab from my dad's shop and tested it. That first pizza told me everything. In 2026, I launched the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix, pre-measured Central Milling organic flour, salt, and yeast. Just add water. Today, tens of thousands of home cooks use Baking Steel to make legendary pizza and bread from regular home ovens. Read more about my story.
