Pizza Glossary and Common Pizza Cooking Terms
Below you will find a comprehensive guide to pizza types and pizza cooking terms. Our pizza glossary is designed for the person that wants to cook award winning pizza recipes but is finding it hard to figure out the many different terms used in the art of cooking pizza.
This guide will help you make sense of it all complete with definitions to the many terms used by award winning pizza chefs to make some of the finist pizzas in the world. This will give you all the terms you need to make wonderful pizza recipes in your own home.
We hope this makes it easier for you and you try some of those wonderfully delicious pizza recipes found on the many pages of Great Pizza Recipes, So, if you were scared to try making your own pizza before because you could not figure out the many different terms used out there this will make it a snap. The list is alphabetical so it should be quick and easy to find what you are looking for.
Pizza A – P
Buffalo Mozzarella: A firm, creamy and stringy cheese made from water buffalo milk with a delicate flavor and thin rind.
California Style Pizza: A pizza with a light and airy yet crispy base and exotic toppings such as asparagus, shrimp and smoked salmon.
Chicago Style Pizza: A deep dish pizza which has cheese under the toppings as well as sprinkled over the top. A Chicago style pizza base has high sides to contain the ingredients rather than having a crust that is thick all over.
Coal Oven: An oven fired by coal. The intense heat (up to 800 degrees F) crisps the crust and keeps it chewy without drying it out. The crust of a pizza baked in a coal oven is deliberately finely charred.
Cornicione: The lip or edge of a pizza. Also known as the end crust.
Cracker Style Pizza: A pizza crust made with under-mixed dough so you can still see bits of flour in it. The dough is fermented for several hours and Pizza Hut were famed for cracker crust pizzas in the 1950s.
Cutter Pan: A perforated or solid round metal pan with a sharp outer edge and sloped sides for baking pizza.
Focaccia Style Pizza: A round, flat, bread base topped with oil and toppings but no pizza sauce.
Fresh Pack Tomatoes: Vine ripened tomatoes packed during the tomato season.
Grandma Pizza: A thin crust Sicilian pizza pie.
Hole Structure: The air bubble network in bread dough. The holes allow the crust to puff up.
Margherita: Also spelt Margarita, this is the classic Neapolitan pizza with a tomato, basil and mozzarella topping to represent the colors of the Italian flag.
Marinara: Also called Napoletana, this is another classic Neapolitan pizza with tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and oregano but no cheese. Anchovies often feature on marinara pizzas.
Mozzarella: A soft cheese made from stretched curd which is a key ingredient in many pizza recipes because it is stringy and the flavor goes well with tomato.
Mutz: What people in New Haven, Connecticut and some New York pizzeria workers call mozzarella.
Neapolitan Style Pizza: A traditional Italian style pizza baked in a wood-fired stone oven.
New York Style Pizza: A pizza with a thin, chewy crust topped with a thin sauce and a high butterfat cheese amongst other ingredients. Slices of New York pizza are wide and thin so you can fold them.
Oven Spring: The quick increase in pizza crust volume during the first few minutes of the baking time.
Pan Style Pizza: The pan used to cook this pizza has oil in it which fries the base of the crust, making it crispy and the dough is allowed to rise in the pan before baking, making it thick and deep.
Par-Bake: Baking dough without any toppings on it to use at a later date.
Parchment Paper: Paper that is coated with silicone and treated with sulfuric acid, which makes the surface smooth, non-flammable and grease resistant. You can bake pizza on parchment paper to stop it sticking, especially if you do not have a peel.
Parmesan Cheese: Parmesan, or parmigiano reggiano, is the best known hard cheese in Northern Italy. It is also made in the United States and adds a good flavor to many different tyes of pizza recipes. Find More Pizza Glossary Terms:
Pizza Glossary P – Z