How to Make Pizza at Home: From Measuring Cups to the Bake
American recipes use cups. Hong Kong kitchens use scales. Sort out the units first and the rest of pizza night gets easy.
Key points
- 1 US cup = 236.6 ml. Never measure flour by cup — weigh it.
- You need four ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast.
- Water at 62% of the flour weight is a safe starting point.
- A 24-hour cold rest in the fridge changes the flavour completely.
- Preheat your stone at max heat for a full 45 minutes.
Start with measuring — that is where most pizzas go wrong
When a first pizza fails, it is usually not your hands. It is the units. Most pizza recipes online are written by Americans in cups and tablespoons, while a Hong Kong kitchen normally has a digital scale and one plastic jug. Get the swap wrong and the dough comes out soupy or dry as a cracker.
One number covers most of it: 1 US cup = 236.588 ml. If you would rather not do the arithmetic at the counter, punch the recipe into this US cup to ml converter and read the millilitres straight off. When a recipe throws pints, fluid ounces or quarts at you, this volume converter handles the rest.
| Recipe says | In millilitres | On a scale |
|---|---|---|
| 1 cup water | 237 ml | 237 g |
| 1 cup bread flour | 237 ml | 120–130 g |
| 1 tablespoon olive oil | 15 ml | 13 g |
| 1 teaspoon salt | 5 ml | 6 g |
Look at the flour row. The same cup can hold 20 g more or less depending on how hard you packed it. Water in millilitres is fine. Flour in grams, always.
Dough is only four things
Flour, water, salt, yeast. That is the whole list. Here is enough for two 250 g balls, which gives you two 12-inch pizzas:
- Bread flour or Italian 00 flour — 300 g
- Water — 186 g (that is 62%)
- Salt — 9 g
- Instant dry yeast — 1 g
Making more, or testing a wetter dough? Type your numbers into our dough calculator instead of doing the maths. Not sure which bag to buy? The flour guide explains protein levels and W values in plain terms.
Method: stir the yeast into the water, add the flour, mix until no dry patches remain, rest 20 minutes, then add salt and knead 5 minutes. Sticky dough at the start is normal. Do not rescue it with extra flour.
Fermentation: the waiting is the recipe
Leave the dough at room temperature for 2 hours, divide it into two balls, box them, and park them in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours. This step is not really about rising. It is about taste. A slow-fermented dough has a soft wheat sweetness and a light tang that same-day dough simply cannot fake.
Pull the balls out 2 hours before baking so they warm up. Cold dough does not puff — it bakes tight and tough.
Shaping: put the rolling pin away
A rolling pin squeezes the gas out of the rim, and the rim is the best part. Press from the middle outwards with your fingertips and leave the outer two centimetres untouched. Then lift the disc and turn it in your hands, letting gravity stretch it thin.
Dust the bench with a little semolina rather than flour. It behaves like tiny ball bearings, so the base slides off the peel instead of sticking and folding.
Baking: your oven needs to be hotter than you think
A home oven usually tops out between 250 and 300 °C. Set it as high as it goes, put a pizza stone or an upside-down baking tray inside, and preheat for a full 45 minutes — not 10. The stone has to soak up heat before it can crisp a base.
- 250 °C with a stone: 8–10 minutes
- 300 °C with a stone: 5–6 minutes
- Outdoor pizza oven at 450 °C: 60–90 seconds
Switch to the top grill for the last minute to get those dark freckles on the cheese. If you are weighing up a new oven, the oven guide compares the realistic options.
Sauce and cheese: use less than you want to
Do not cook the tomatoes. Crush a tin of whole peeled tomatoes by hand, add a pinch of salt, and you have the sauce Naples uses. For a 12-inch pizza, 80 g of sauce and 100 g of mozzarella is plenty. Pile on more and the base steams instead of crisping.
For topping combinations that actually work, read the toppings and sauce guide, and for the full method start to finish, our Neapolitan pizza recipe lays out every step.
From measuring cup to the bake, this is doable at home
Home pizza comes down to three gates: convert the units properly, give the dough time, and get the oven truly hot. Clear those three and your first homemade pie already beats most delivery. It will not be perfect the first time, and that is fine. Write down your water percentage, your rest time and your bake time, change one of them next round, and within a few weekends you will know exactly how your own oven behaves.