Everything You Need to Make Amazing Pizza at Home, According to Cookbook Author (and Wirecutter Staffer!) Katie Quinn (2024)

Most pizza dough recipes rely on instant or active dry yeast to give a crust its rise, but for a fermentation fanatic like Katie, “There’s basically no other option for a pizza dough in my mind than sourdough,” she said.

As outlined in her cookbook and in one of her YouTube cooking demos (video), her recipe for sourdough pissaladière (technically a French flatbread very similar to pizza) calls for just four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter.

Another unusual part of her process: Rather than kneading the dough or putting it in a stand mixer or food processor, she employs a stretch-and-fold method to develop her dough, which is particularly good for strengthening gluten when using sourdough.

“It’s a series of three stretch-and-folds that takes about three hours in total,” she said, which includes waiting time for the dough to settle and rise. “You pick up a side of the dough, stretch it, and fold it over on itself. All of that happens in the bowl.”

While flour can easily spill out of shallower mixing bowls, the depth of the Cuisinart bowls keeps all the ingredients where they belong. Katie also likes how sturdy they are, which prevents them from moving around on her countertop.

After 24 or so hours, the dough has typically risen to about twice its initial size. To divvy it up and portion it out, Katie relies on a bench scraper, like our top-pick , which can also be used as a spatula to seamlessly move dough from table to pan to peel. Similarly, Katie likes using the bench scraper to scoop up freshly chopped toppings and transfer them into containers as needed.

Katie initially planned to keep her Ooni Koda on a metal chef’s rack she already owned, but she found that the oven’s boxy dimensions—about 23 inches across and 25 inches deep—wouldn’t be an ideal fit. She then tried placing the oven on her patio’s concrete pavers, but slinging pies while crouched on the ground wasn’t so great, either. “We were doing sumo squats to get the pizza in and out of the oven,” she said.

That’s when she decided to spring for the Ooni Folding Table. It’s designed to accommodate all Ooni ovens, with a second, lower shelf to house a propane tank and hooks on the side to hang pizza peels and other handy utensils.

“The size of the table is perfect; it fits the oven and the propane but doesn’t take up any more space than it needs to,” Katie said. “It’s also super sturdy, it folds up easily, and it’s super portable. It’s just high quality and does what it needs to do really well.”

Another separate—but, in Katie’s experience, necessary—purchase is not one, but two pizza peels. She recommends a wooden or bamboo one to shape raw pies on and deliver them into the oven, as well as a metal one for turning pies as they cook (the back of the Ooni Koda typically gets hotter than the front, so rotating is essential) and then quickly taking them out once they’re done.

The bamboo and aluminum peels that Katie uses are also from Ooni. She’s found them to be durable and reliable; so far, they’ve handled roughly 200 pizzas while enduring in-oven temps that reach nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

A lightly floured bamboo peel “is nice and slippy-slidey in a way that’s necessary to let the pizza go off and into the oven,” Katie explained, although getting the hang of how to jiggle a raw pizza off of a bamboo peel does take a little practice.

Meanwhile, her thinner metal peel is much easier to position under a cooking or fully cooked pie when it’s time to turn it or take it out of the oven. (Ooni does sell another metal peel that’s billed as a turning peeljust for that step in the process, but Katie says the brand’s regular metal peel can handle turning just as well.)

Typically, Katie makes one 12-inch pizza per party guest. Each person doesn’t get their own pie, though, since tasting different kinds is part of the fun. “As the pizzas come out, we cut each into six or eight slices and let people grab it and start eating,” she explained.

In Italy, Katie and her husband saw their friends using scissors instead of roller-style pizza cutters to portion out their pies, and they have since adopted the habit.

“There’s kind of no going back once you cut pizza with scissors,” she said. “With a roller, you can’t always tell if the crust has been cut all the way through or not, and then sometimes you’re inadvertently cutting into the plate or peel or cutting board below it. With scissors, you can always tell when you’ve completely cut through the pizza, but you’ll never cut the surface below.”

Having a pair of kitchen shears like our top-pick OXO Good Grips Kitchen and Herb Scissors handy when serving slices also means they’re right there, ready and waiting, to add a final touch to a classic Margherita pizza: snipping bits of fresh basil right on top.

When in Rome (or Naples, or pretty much anywhere in Italy), Italians drizzle olive oil over their pies as a final nod to the gods of Mediterranean delights before chowing down. Katie likes to do the same with our pick for the best olive oil you can find at the store, Graza Sizzle Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

“It’s become my go-to olive oil because it’s easy to source, and I love that it comes in a squeeze-top bottle, which allows me to drizzle just a thin pour—what Italians call un filo d’olio, or ‘a string of oil’—on top,” she said. She also noted that she loves its “smooth yet slightly peppery” taste.

“Italians do this not just for the effect, but because it completes the flavor profile. It’s the crowning moment to a pizza pie’s success,” said Katie. “It’s also a sign that the pizza is ready to be eaten and enjoyed, hopefully in the presence of friends and washed down by your beverage of choice.”

This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Catherine Kast.