Top 12+ Homemade Pizza Recipes Better Than Delivery

These pizza recipes span classic techniques, modern shortcuts, and regional styles worth trying.

Homemade pizza can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. You can cold ferment your dough for 24 hours and fire it off in an outdoor pizza oven for a nicely charred Neapolitan masterpiece, or you can spread some tomato sauce and cheese on a store-bought baguette and call it a day. Below, we've gathered 12 pizza recipes worth making at home. We've separated them into categories: We start with the OG Neapolitan-style, move into New York-style, then we offer some fun, foolproof workarounds for restaurant-quality pizza at home before finishing with regional styles. The beauty of making pizza at home is that it's primed for experimentation—and it's yours to make exactly how you like it.

01 of 12

Basic Neapolitan Pizza Dough

It's crucial to give the dough ample time to ferment, which allows for continued flavor development and structural strength. Use a high-gluten flour, such as Italian-style "OO," if you can, which will give your dough superior elasticity and chewiness. Be sure to cook your pizza at the highest possible temperature for great char and a puffy crust.

02 of 12

Basic New York-Style Pizza Dough

New York and Neapolitan-style pizza doughs are very similar, but a New York-style crust tends to be slightly thicker and sturdier with a tender chew. Here, we use a food processor to develop the necessary gluten for the dough, which ensures a well-structured crust with minimal effort.

03 of 12

New York-Style White Pizza

If you always order a slice of white pizza as a creamy contrast to the brighter, sweeter tomato-sauced pies at your local slice shop, here's how to recreate that quintessential white-slice magic at home.

04 of 12

Vodka Pizza

This pizza is a richer, creamier, spicier alternative to traditional tomato sauce pies. It's as easy as making a classic vodka sauce and spreading it over your pie. Don't be shy about ladling more sauce onto the pizza than you'd normally use—it'll prevent the sauce from breaking as it reduces in the oven.

05 of 12

The Best Meatball Pizza Recipe

This recipe combines our editorial director Daniel's method for the best Italian-American meatballs with former Serious Eats editor Kenji's New York-style pizza crust for a satisfyingly hefty and carnivorous pie. Forming small meatballs means they can be distributed more evenly over the pizza, and sautéing part of the meatball mix to flavor the sauce brings savory depth into every bite.

06 of 12

NJ-Style Mustard Pie

Don't knock this Trenton, NJ classic before you try it. A mustard pie is exactly what it sounds like: a fantastic slice of pizza with the zip and heat of spicy brown mustard spread just below the cheese. A touch of sugar in the tomato sauce gives it the signature sweetness typical of pizza found in a Jersey slice shop.

07 of 12

Foolproof Pan Pizza

Here's a hard truth: Making pizza at home requires a lot of effort and delayed gratification, and without the extremely high temperatures available in a commercial or wood-fired oven, you may never get the kind of char and texture you'd get from your favorite Sicilian-style pie shop. Enter the pan pizza. This recipe from former Serious Eats editor Kenji eliminates much of the frustration that comes with homemade pizza, producing a pie with a thick, crispy crust that stays puffy beneath layers of sauce and mozzarella.

08 of 12

Extra-Crispy Bar-Style Tortilla Pizza Supreme

Sometimes you just need pizza pronto…which means using flour tortillas as the base for your pizza. Far from being a compromise, tortilla-based pizzas are the ideal quick way to make a super-crisp, extra-thin crust in less than 15 minutes. The cast iron skillet is the ideal pan here, as it gives the pizza a satisfyingly crispy bottom with nicely browned edges.

09 of 12

The Best French Bread Pizza

It's hard not to have a soft spot for French bread pizza: Melty cheese and bright tomato sauce oozing over crisp bread feels like a warm hug, and it takes very little effort. Here, you'll opt for grocery-store style soft French bread rather than the crusty, bakery-quality loaves you might otherwise choose. It has the tender-to-crisp ratio you want for a makeshift pizza. Pre-toasting the bread with garlic butter, then adding and baking the cheese in two layers—once before the tomato sauce and once after—creates a crisp, sturdy base for toppings and reduces the risk of the bread becoming soggy from the sauce.

10 of 12

St. Louis-Style Pizza

This regional pizza style is defined by its cracker-thin crust and topping of ultra-melty Provel, a blend of provolone, Swiss, and cheddar with a touch of liquid smoke for extra flavor. Here, you'll add shortening to the crust to limit gluten development, creating an extra-snappy crust with a pastry-like crispness. You'll also make your own Provel blend for a smooth, creamy, meltable topping.

11 of 12

Iowa Taco Pizza

This regional pizza-taco mashup, which has become Iowa's de facto state dish, originated at Happy Joe's, an Iowa-based chain. It's characterized by a crispy, chewy crust topped with refried beans, ground beef, cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomato cubes, and canned olives. A topping of seasoned tortilla chips brings crunch, and a sturdy same-day dough ensures a crisp crust that can support heavy-duty toppings.

12 of 12

Detroit-Style Pan Pizza

Although rectangular pan pizzas have been served in Detroit since the 1940s, Detroit-style pizza didn't become popular nationwide until 2016. Since then, the pizza style has firmly established itself on slice-shop menus across the country. Here, we use a specialized Detroit-style pan to promote even browning and heat conduction. We also spread cheese all the way to the edges of the pizza pan before other toppings are added, which allows it to melt into the edges for a nicely crisp crust.