One of the most heated debates regarding pizza-making is the order in which the toppings should be placed on a pizza. And while personal taste does play a role in this, there is actually a correct order.
The first thing that should go on the pizza dough is the tomato sauce, next is the hard cheese, then the meaty toppings, then the vegetables, after which you can add the soft cheese, and after the pizza is cooked you can add garnishes.
The tomato sauce will go first on the dough, then hard cheese, then the toppings, starting with meat and ending with the vegetables, then soft cheese, and finally garnishes.
While there are a few exceptions to this, which we will discuss shortly, this is the correct order in which you should be placing each ingredient of a pizza. Now, let me tell you why this is the order in which you should make your pizza.
Why Top the Pizza in This Order
The basic idea behind this order is avoiding a soggy pizza and giving each ingredient proper cooking conditions.
Tomato Sauce
The tomato sauce will be the first on the dough. Due to this the dough will absorb the moisture in the sauce, and since the dough gets extremely hot in the oven, it will evaporate that moisture without affecting the consistency of the pizza.
Additionally, if you were to place the sauce over other ingredients, they won’t be able to help the sauce evaporate and you will be left with a pizza soggy pizza, with a more pronounced tomato sauce taste.
Hard Cheese
Just like everybody knows that the sauce is the first thing that you put on the pizza. Everybody knows that the next thing that you put is cheese, but in reality, this is only half true.
Cheese can be separated into numerous categories, but in this article, we are going to look at only two of them, hard cheeses and soft cheeses. The main difference between the two types is the amount of moisture present in the cheese.
Some common hard cheeses that you would typically see on a pizza are:
- Cheddar
- Parmigiano-Reggiano
- Grana Padano
- Pecorino Romano
- Gorgonzola
- Manchego
- Emmental
Now you don’t have to memorize which cheese is hard and which is soft, in most cases, you can simply tell by touching the cheese and checking its consistency.
The reason why you should add hard cheese right after the sauce is simple. Hard cheese acts as glue, that will keep the rest of the ingredients on the pizza, and it will help uniformize the taste of the pizza. A lot of toppings, like pepperoni, have fat in them, which is full of taste. If that fat were to drop on the dough itself, it will be absorbed almost instantly. But the cheese won’t absorb the fat just in one spot, and it will help spread it all over the pizza.
The reason why you can’t use any kind of cheese, and just hard cheese is also very simple. Hard cheese has less water in it, and as a result, it will melt faster, and it won’t make the pizza soggy with all the water that comes out of it.
Before we discuss the soft cheese, we will first take a look at the toppings.
Toppings
Ideally, when making a pizza, you won’t have one topping covering another, since this will make it harder for the topping underneath to cook properly. But realistically speaking this is not always the case. And if you follow the order that I recommend you, it also won’t be a problem.
The first topping that should go on a pizza is the meat, and in this category, we will include all of it, pepperoni, bacon, chicken, ham, etc. And only after you are done with the meat you can add the vegetables.
Vegetables contain a lot of water, while meat toppings don’t. When heated up, the water inside the vegetables will transform into steam, and if the vegetables are covered the water won’t have anywhere to go.
One other important reason why you want to place the meat before the vegetables is that most vegetables have to be cooked properly in order to get the most taste out of them, while meat toppings just have to be heated up a little. But this has a lot to do with personal taste.
If you don’t use too many toppings when you make your pizza, and no topping is on top of another topping then you can place them in whatever order you like. But if you like to have a lot of toppings on your pizza, and they sometimes end up one on top of each other, then you should follow this order.
Soft Cheese
After you are done placing the meat and vegetables, you can add some soft cheese.
Some common soft cheeses that you would typically see on a pizza are:
- Mozzarella
- Feta
- Brie
- Ricotta
- Camembert
- Gorgonzola
- Cottage
- Chevre
The main difference between soft cheese and hard cheese is that soft cheese has a lot more water in it. So it can’t be placed before the toppings. If you were to do so, all of the water from the cheese will get absorbed by the dough, which will make the pizza soggy, and stop the dough from cooking properly.
Out of all soft cheeses, the most popular one for pizza is by far mozzarella, so let me give you a few tips about it.
In most supermarkets, you will find two types of mozzarella, grated mozzarella, and mozzarella in brine. The grated one has been hydrated to make it simpler to spread on cheese, but by doing so they remove a lot of its taste. So my advice is to always get the one in brine.
But the problem with the mozzarella in brine is that it is normally far too wet to put on a pizza without transforming the dough into a wet mess. So what you should do is grate the mozzarella one hour before you will make the pizza, and leave the grated cheese on some paper towels. The towels will absorb the excess water, and leave the taste intact.
Garnishes
And finally garnishes. In this category, we will include fresh herbs like basil, oregano, and rocket(arugula).
Garnishes are the last ones to go on the pizza. But they should only be placed on the pizza after you take it out of the oven.
The fresh herbs will lose their taste if you put them in the oven. Unlike other cases, this is not a matter of personal taste, it’s a fact.
Dried herbs are a completely different thing from fresh herbs, and placing some fresh herbs for 15 minutes in an oven won’t transform them into dried herbs.
So, overall this is the order that you should follow when making pizza. But as you can imagine there are some exceptions to these rules.
Exceptions
The first and biggest exception to this order would be the Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. On this pizza, the cheese goes first, and then you add the sauce.
Another popular pizza that uses the same order as the Chicago pizza, is the Sicilian pizza.
The main difference between the two of them is that the Chicago pizza is deeper, and is more similar to a pie, while the Sicilian pizza is closer to traditional pizza.
When it comes to cheese, it is not uncommon to see a hard cheese like Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano, being added to the pizza after it’s been cooked. Those cheeses have a very intense flavor that can be lost if cooked.
In the case of toppings, the most popular topping that is usually not cooked is Prosciutto Crudo, which is an Italian uncooked, unsmoked, and dry-cured ham that is usually served thinly sliced. This topping will lose a lot of its unique taste when cooked, so it’s usually added after the pizza is taken out of the oven.
There are a lot of other ingredients that can be added after the pizza has been cooked, but those are some of the most popular. But as I said, in a lot of cases it comes down to personal taste. Some people might like their Prosciutto cooked, instead of raw.
Final Thoughts
In most cases the correct order when making a pizza is this:
- Tomato Sauce
- Hard Cheese
- Toppings, first the meat, then the vegetables
- Soft Cheese
- Garnishes, after the pizza is cooked
As I said at the beginning of the article, the main idea behind this order is to avoid a soggy pizza and to ensure that every ingredient gets the chance to cook properly.
But, even if there is a correct order in which to place toppings on a pizza, this shouldn’t stop you from experimenting. As I said, personal preference plays a big role in how you should make your pizza. And if your preferred order makes your pizza soggy, then you should check out this article, where you will find a few tips that will help you solve that problem: 7 Reasons Why Your Pizza Dough Is Uncooked (+How to Fix).