Quick & Easy Pizza Recipes

You came here for quick recipes, so you must be in a hurry and I’ll keep this intro short. Lots of pizza recipes require at least a day of planning because you need to let the dough rise overnight. Doing a long rise can make a difference in flavor, often adding complexity and altering the texture. Making your dough the day before also breaks up the work. So, I like making doughs that require longer rises. But, sometimes you just don’t plan in advance or you’re too tired to get the dough together the day before. These are recipes for those days.

That isn’t to say that these recipes are inferior to long proving doughs — they aren’t (at least the Giadzy and Weeknight Neapolitan ones — the St. Louis one made the list mainly for its speed). Shorter rise doughs sometimes have a more crisp crust and their simpler flavor profile allows the toppings to truly shine. That’s not always the case though. I feel that the Giadzy pizza has a complexity and uniqueness that rivals just about any dough I’ve tried.

Generally, these recipes will have more yeast because they have less time to rise. The St. Louis style recipe speeds things up even more by swapping yeast for baking powder. These quick recipes are also more likely to require some kneading and/or mixing — less rise time means less time to develop gluten.

1. Giadzy’s Margherita Grandma Pizza

This recipe is unique, and you might question what you’re being asked to do. Hang in there — the resulting pizza is amazing. I’ve never had so many textures in a crust: the outer layer is so crisp, some inner bits are light and air filled, others are dense, and, finally, there will be some slightly underdone, doughy bits where the sauce and dough meld together beautifully. What makes this recipe unique is the insanely high-hydration dough it uses. The dough will look more like pancake batter than pizza dough. And, you won’t stretch it in the pan — you’ll pour it in. The recipe does not list ingredients by weight, but I give the weights I use below. I recommend starting with my weights and adjusting as you see fit. To avoid sticking, I also recommend using a non-stick pan. (I get more into my suggested mods in the full post.)

Start to Oven: 1.5 to 2 hours.

Start to Eating: 2.5 to 3 hours (yes — it takes 40-50 minutes to cook and 10 more to cool).

My Flour & Water Amounts:

• 448 grams of King Arthur bread flour.
• 448 grams of filtered water. 

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2. Weeknight Neapolitan-Style Pizza

While this pizza isn’t hard to make, it is the most challenging one on this page. What makes this recipe a little more advanced is that it requires (a) kneading and (b) stretching the dough. Despite the additional effort the recipe requires, I included it because it produces an excellent result in a short amount of time. The 00 flour the recipe calls for makes a difference. If you don’t have it, you could substitute another flour, but you’d probably be better off choosing a different recipe. As I discuss in my full post on this recipe, you do lose something by skipping the longer prove time but you still get a great pizza. If you have more time and want a more complexly flavored dough, I’d recommend Brian Lagerstrom’s recipe.

Start to Oven: 2.75 to 3 hours.

Start to Eating: 3 to 3.25 hours.

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3. St. Louis Style Pizza

This recipe makes the list more for its ease and quick preparation than its flavor. Of the recipes on this page, this is the fastest and the easiest. However, speed comes at a cost. What makes this dough so fast and easy is its use of baking powder instead of yeast. This eliminates the rise time. Unfortunately, it also eliminates the flavor and texture you get from a yeasted dough. Still you can have it ready start-to-finish in under an hour, under 30 minutes if you really hustle. I didn’t have Provel and used the cheese combo suggested in another recipe. Even if you don’t make this pizza, the cheese combo is worth trying on another dough — it’s a unique and surprisingly harmonious blend. One more note, if you don’t have it, I think you can skip the corn starch.

Start to Oven: 30 to 45 minutes.

Start to Eating: 45 minutes to an hour — if you hustle, you might get this one done closer to 3o minutes.