Throughout this challenge I came across alternate ways of making pizza dough using interesting raitos, methodologies or ingredients. Since I usually just made a cheese pizza with each of them (a nice baseline that lets me judge solely on the crust) I don’t think they need their own post, but I’m going to touch on them here and provide some notes

Rye/Wheat Pizza dough (Nancy Silverton)
This pizza dough was getting a lot of hype online and I was curious what the addition of rye flour would do for a pizza dough. So I tracked down her recipe and gave it a shot. The methodology was simple – it used a sponge (or biga) to preferment and the folding technique. The rest of the steps were easy enough to follow. The resulting pizza was tasty and definitely had an earthier flavor than I was used to which was kinda of nice. I think the issue I has was the recipe I was using was adapted for home ovens, and I cooked them at 900 in my outdoor pizza oven so they dried out a bit. I think I’d like to give this a go again but use the high heat formulas

No knead cast iron pizza
No kneading? No complex formulas to create a delicious pan pizza? Sign me up -I’ve got a cast iron pan and some time so lets go! There’s a bunch of versions of this out there but the most referenced one is here . It really couldn’t be simpler: Mix the ingredients then cover and wait. That’s it. Once the dough has risen put it in the pans, then rise again until they’re puffy. Sauce, cheese and fire on a baking stone or steel. The resulting crust was open and airy and crispy from the oil used and the cheese at the edges got crispy. Overall this was a really good pizza, and super easy.

“72+” Pizza (extreme fermentation)

I’m usually a 24-48 hour pizza fermenting guy – 36 hours is usually the sweet spot where the yeast has put in the work and the flavor and rise is where it needs to be for an amazing pizza. I found a pizza formula for 72 hours and decided to make three dough balls and make them at 72, 96, and 120 hours. It obviously used very little yeast and relied on time to make it happen. The dough at 72 was super easy to open and felt a bit delicate so I was careful to top and bake quickly. The dough definitely had a nice flavor and cooked up crisp. The 96 was a bit more delicate and I had to use a a bit more bench flour to ensure I didn’t rip the dough when opening it and it cooked up a bit flat – I suspect the yeast was starting to give out. The 120 was a problem as it felt like it would tear if I looked at it funny – so I setup the pie on parchment paper and shaped it gently into a square shape as opening it didn’t seem possible. What came out of the oven wasn’t that great it didn’t have a great bite and was almost a flatbread. I suspect if I wanted to ferment that long I’d need to change the yeast ratios to account for it as the original formula was only for 72.

Thin Crust (Bar Pie)
Who doesn’t love a cracker thin crust? Crispy yet tender this bar pie style pizza is super easy to shape as you roll it out with a rolling pin (so much easier with an industrial roller, but all I have is the pin, so..) parbake it to ensure the sauce doesn’t make it soggy then top and throw back in the oven. Charred edges, crispy crust lots of ‘ronis and you’ve got a good Friday night. This goes really good with an ice cold beer which makes sense!

Sourdough Pizza
What to do with all this sourdough discard I was creating in making a sourdough starter? The very first thing that came to mind was making sourdough pizza of course. I did some research and found a few common methodologies and the one that made sense was to use the discard with some fresh yeast to refresh the rising ability a bit. It was also useful in that I could make it in the morning and have pizza at night since the starter delivered most of the flavor elements a long rise in the fridge would give it. The first attempt wasn’t that great, I think the starter was a bit weak so I fed that bad boy a bit more frequently and the next time the dough rose much better and the pizza had a great sourdough flavor note. I suspect I’ll be using this a lot as I go through my sourdough phase.

Tortilla Pizza / Naan Pizza
Is this cheating? Probably but I wanted pizza and didn’t have dough available. What I did have was a bunch of flour tortillas in the pantry. So I looked online and I found a viral video of tortilla pizzas and decided that sure this could work. Dear readers – it did not. If you aren’t a pizza person and just want a hit of sauce and cheese then sure, this could work for you. I suspect that one of the issues can be that I had ‘extra soft and fluffy’ tortillas because that’s what my kids like. If I used standard thin tortillas maybe it would have been a different experience?

Building on this, I also has some garlic naan leftover and said – well what if I throw sauce and cheese on this? The first try was a disaster as naan is designed to absorb liquid and that’s what it did turning into a soggy mess. Try #2 was me putting down a solid layer of cheese first then saucing it and that one was actually pretty good.

Bear with me here – I know these are pizza hacks. They are no substitute for a real dough that is made with love but if my research showed me anything its that a lot of people are doing this and who am I to judge their pizza happiness? One of my favorite memories as a kid is making hot pockets (back before they actually existed) by buttering two slices of bread and filling it with sauce and cheese and using that old school sandwich press. If doing these hacks makes people want to learn how to make their own pizza, isn’t that a good thing?

That’s what it all comes down to. Pizza is happiness – you make whatever pizza makes you happy. Except pineapple pizza. Stop it.

In the beginning, and some weeks through this year I didn’t feel up for the research and effort new styles of pizza required so I went to my standard New York style pizza dough and just played with different toppings. [Shout out to Tony Gemignani’s method for a great dough] This was usually informed by whatever was fresh at the grocer, leftover cheese in the fridge or sometimes even what I had in the pantry. Instead of making a bunch of different posts – I decided to collate them all into one post since they all share the same base.

Three Cheese Pizza
This is a pretty standard pizza found in the NJ/NY area but I mixed it up by starting with a heavy layer of Parmesan, then dry mozzarella, then finishing with chunks of fresh mozzarella. I liked the clean milky taste of the fresh mozzarella as a counterpoint to the salty parmesan. A healthy dusting of Sicilian oregano and we have a winner!

Brooklyn Pie
What to do when it’s tomato season and you have an amazing fresh tomato at peak ripeness? Make a Brooklyn pie of course. The sauce base is just pureed pure plum tomatoes, large slices of fresh mozzarella (having an Italian Deli in town sure is helpful),s ome thin slices of said tomato and basil leaves from the garden

Prosciutto Pizza
I had some delicious prosciutto left over from something and decided to use it on a pizza. I knew one thing up front, you shouldn’t fire the pizza with the prosciutto on it so I went with a simple sauce of just pureed tomatoes and I wanted a light cheese so fresh mozzarella was the pick here. I fired it in the ooni and as soon as it came out I layered on the paper thin prosciutto and watched the fat start to melt into the pizza and knew this was going to be amazing. The trick it the meat has to be thin – none of this grocery store prepackaged stuff – go to an Italian deli and get it sliced super thin for best results.

Roasted Red Pepper Pizza
I had a bunch of jarred red peppers left over from a recipe and decided they needed to end up on a pizza. I knew that they had a flavor punch and were oily so some dry mozzarella was the go to here and I knew I wanted to ramp up the flavor a bit so I made a more robust sauce and added some red pepper flakes to it to counter the sweetness of the red peppers with a bit of heat. The only notes I had was to cut the red peppers into smaller slices, the texture of an entire red pepper was a bit much

Tex-Mex Pizza
Jersey Corn is some good corn – sweet and plentiful in the early fall and what else utilizes a lot of corn? Tex Mex cooking, that’s what. I tinkered with this a few times as the first try was pretty bland and I learned that the high heat of the pizza oven just isn’t enough to cook the corn so charring it on a grill before it goes on the pizza was the key there. I used pepper jack as the cheese and thin sliced red onions to provide a sweet element. Adding a bit of salsa at the end was universally panned as a bad option so if I make this again that salsa will remain in the pantry!

Meat Lovers Pizza
I don’t know why I waited to long to bust this bad boy out – I love pizza and I love meat so this marriage seemed to be destiny. I didn’t want to have a greasy mess to I limited it to sweet Italian sausage, meatballs, pepperoni, and crumbled bacon. Hmmm.. healthy. I cooked the bacon in the oven until crisp and added it at the end because otherwise it would have been a greasy mess. This was amazing – every bit was a meat enhanced flavor experience and if my cholesterol would allow it, I’d eat this all the time!

BBQ Chicken Pizza
Have a bunch of leftover BBQ chicken? Throw it on a pizza (I mean, that’s my first thought for most leftovers really). I knew I wanted to have that summer BBQ vibe for this pizza so I started thinking what can I grill to add some smoky flavor to this and settled on some corn and red onions. Grilling them up until they were slightly charred and adding them right at the end of the firing turned out to work great. The general feedback was the flavors were good but it was missing something – I’ll keep working on this until I figure it out. I suggested BBQ sauce and we tried a little bit on a slice and that’s.. not the answer.

Pineapple Pizza
Pineapple on pizza is nothing short of an insult to the very soul of Italian cuisine, a culinary abomination that defies centuries of tradition and the fundamental principles of balance, flavor, and respect for ingredients. Italian cooking is rooted in the idea that simplicity, seasonality, and harmony between flavors create perfection, and yet this tropical atrocity throws all of that out the window by introducing an aggressively sweet, watery, and acidic fruit onto a dish that was never meant to accommodate such an outlandish ingredient. The sheer audacity of pairing pineapple’s syrupy sugariness with the rich, savory depth of tomato sauce and mozzarella is an assault on the palate, a chaotic clash that drowns out the natural umami of the cheese and ruins the delicate interplay of flavors that make pizza an art form. Italians have spent centuries perfecting pizza, from the humble Neapolitan Margherita to the crisp Roman al taglio, all with an emphasis on balance and authenticity—yet somehow, this foreign corruption has spread like a virus, defiling menus worldwide. It is an offense not only to taste but to history, a mockery of the craftsmanship and passion that goes into every true Italian pizza. If there were any culinary justice in the world, pineapple on pizza would be banned outright, confined to the realm of misguided food experiments never to be spoken of again in the presence of serious pizza lovers.

But my wife loves it, so here we are. Happy wife and all that.

Sun dried tomato and artichoke with hot honey and basil oil

While brainstorming on what pizza to make that week I decided to raid the pantry and see what we’ve got. I found a bottle of sundried tomatoes, some artichoke hearts, some hot honey and a mostly empty bottle of basil oil. I looked at my pantry haul and shrugged ‘yeah. these should all go on a pizza together’ I opted for a simple tomato sauce as the oil from the sun dried tomatoes packs a ton of flavor and would overpower any delicate flavors I had on there. Some mozzarella mixed with provolone provided a nice salty background note the artichoke hearts got slightly charred in the oven which was a nice flavor. I added the. honey and oil at the end to preserve their delicate fresh flavors. The pizza was.. OK there was just too much going on. Too many flavors and textures competing. Sometimes that works but in this case it detracted from the finished product. It wasn’t bad though, so I did eat it but next time I’d go simpler.

SIX Cheese Pizza
We did three cheeses – lets go bigger! Four cheese? NO! FIVE CHEESE? HAHA Try SIX CHEESE! Is this because you had a bunch of leftover cheese in your fridge you wanted to use up? Yes. That’s exactly how this came about. I had some provolone, fontina, mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, ricotta and parmesan. I used a standard tomato base and ensured an even mix of the fontina, provolone, and mozzarella to ensure a good coverage. I started with a heavy dusting of parmesan, added the mixed cheeses then fired that bad boy in the oven. When I pulled it out I dropped dollops of ricotta across the pizza and dusted with oregano and basil. This lactose bomb was delicious and I ate almost the entire thing somehow all the cheeses worked in synergy and created a singularity of cheese. 6/5 Stars

Tre Sugo
I stole this idea from a pizza place near me – they made a standard pizza cheese first then striped three different sauces over the pizza – Tomato sauce, Pesto, and vodka sauce. I really liked that idea. They did it with a spiral pattern with one of those spinning sauce dispenser things but that seemed like too much work so I just striped the entire pizza in strips of different sauces so every bite you got a bit of each. It was really good – the only drawback was that the pesto was really strong and tended to overpower the other two sauces. I think if I make this again, I’ll make it a pesto cream sauce which I think would complement the other sauces better.

If you think pizza means a thin, round, crisp-bottomed crust with neatly arranged toppings, sfincione (pronounced sfeen-cho-nay) is here to shake up your expectations. This is not your typical pizza—it’s thick, spongy, loaded with flavor, and dripping with history. The name itself comes from the Latin spongia, meaning sponge, which is fitting given its airy, focaccia-like texture. But while it shares some DNA with focaccia, sfincione is an entity all its own, thanks to its signature sauce and toppings that make it uniquely Sicilian.

Sfincione traces its roots back centuries, long before the modern pizza we know today took over the streets of Naples. Sicily, with its complex history of Greek, Arab, Norman, and Spanish influences, has always been a place of culinary fusion, and sfincione is no exception. Legend has it that this hearty, sauce-laden creation originated in Palermo, specifically in the kitchens of monasteries, where nuns baked it for religious feasts. It was a special treat, richer and more flavorful than everyday bread, but still simple and affordable enough for the common people. Unlike Neapolitan pizza, which became an icon of street food, sfincione was traditionally made at home, particularly around Christmastime, when families would gather to bake enormous trays of it to share.

What sets sfincione apart is its unapologetically bold sauce—a slow-cooked blend of tomatoes, onions, olive oil, and sometimes anchovies, creating a deeply savory and slightly sweet flavor. Unlike the fresh tomato-and-basil simplicity of Neapolitan pizza, sfincione’s sauce is more like a jammy, concentrated stew, meant to seep into the soft, porous dough. Speaking of the dough, it’s thicker and softer than most other pizza styles, but never heavy. It bakes up light and airy on the inside, with a crispy, olive oil-kissed crust on the bottom.

The toppings are just as distinctive. Instead of the classic mozzarella that dominates most pizzas, sfincione is typically topped with caciocavallo, a cheese that brings a sharp, tangy bite. If you’ve never had caciocavallo, imagine a firmer, more pungent cousin of provolone. Some versions also include grated pecorino for extra saltiness. Another key ingredient is the breadcrumb topping—yes, breadcrumbs on pizza! Sicilians have a knack for using breadcrumbs as a way to add texture and stretch ingredients further, and here they serve the dual purpose of soaking up all that rich sauce while adding a satisfying crunch.

Sfincione’s appearance might surprise those used to picture-perfect, symmetrical pizzas. It’s often baked in large, rectangular trays and cut into square slices, its surface an uneven, glorious mess of sauce, cheese, and crispy bits. Some versions are even more rustic, with no cheese at all, relying solely on the onions, anchovies, and breadcrumbs for flavor. This is especially true in Bagheria, a small town near Palermo, where locals fiercely defend their cheese-less, extra oniony version of sfincione as the “real” one.

Though sfincione remains a Sicilian specialty, it has made its way beyond the island. Sicilian immigrants carried their pizza traditions with them to the United States, where sfincione became the blueprint for what we now call Sicilian-style pizza—a thicker, rectangular pie that’s popular in pizzerias from New York to Detroit. But there’s a key difference: American Sicilian pizza usually has mozzarella and a more standard tomato sauce, whereas authentic sfincione stays true to its roots with its onion-laden, breadcrumb-topped goodness.

In Sicily, you don’t have to look far to find sfincione. Bakeries, street vendors, and old-school panifici (bread shops) sell it fresh from the oven, its scent wafting through the air, luring hungry passersby. It’s often sold in squares, wrapped in brown paper, and eaten on the go. In Palermo, you’ll even find sfincionari, street vendors who peddle their wares from three-wheeled carts, calling out “Scarsu di carni, ma chinu di sustanza!” which roughly translates to, “Low on meat, but full of substance!”—a proud nod to the pizza’s humble, meat-free but flavor-packed nature.

Sfincione is more than just a regional variation of pizza—it’s a slice of Sicilian history, a reflection of the island’s resourcefulness, and a testament to how a few simple ingredients can create something utterly delicious. Whether you’re lucky enough to try it in a bustling Sicilian market or decide to bake it at home, one thing is certain: sfincione is a pizza that tells a story, one crunchy, saucy, cheesy bite at a time.