Frying Pan Pizza Recipe

The popularity of frying pan pizzas has boomed in 2020. It’s a quick and efficient way to make great pizzas at home. Many doughs require overnight proving to really develop the flavour, but the dough in our recipe only needs to sit for two hours! We’ve used a combination of milk, malt extract and a little olive oil to achieve a richly flavoured and smooth-textured dough, that’s ready to use on the day it’s made.

Why cook pizzas in a frying pan?

Although a pizza oven creates a wonderfully crisp, puffy base in a matter of minutes, they’re a sizeable investment to have at home. And while you can bake pizzas in the oven, they won’t get that signature, crispy base. That’s where the frying pan method comes in – you can have crispy, puffy pizzas, made in your own kitchen.

The pizza cooks through evenly, and because you’re pre-cooking the bases in a frying pan on the hob, it takes much less time to finish the pizzas under the grill.

How to make pizza in a frying pan at home

Once you’ve got your risen dough, it’s a case of heating an oven-safe frying pan on the hob over a medium heat. Gently stretch your dough out and into a circle, then place it in a dry pre-heated frying pan.

Top with a few tablespoons of crushed San Marzano tomatoes and whatever else you fancy, then cook for a couple of minutes. Use a fish slice or heat-proof spatula to gently peer under and check on the base. Once it’s starting to brown, put the pan under a super-hot grill (we heated ours to 270°C) for around 6-10 minutes, checking regularly.

To enjoy the pizzas at their best, pop them in the middle of the table and let everyone share while the next one cooks.

For specific pizza recipes click through on our topping ideas below. 

The pizza base dough

We love Caputo Pizzeria flour, and Molini del Ponte PIZZA flour for their soft texture and fuller flavour. But any 00 flour or strong white flour will work well when making the dough for pizza bases.

Frying pan pizza making equipment

  1. Mixing bowl
  2. Large plate
  3. 28cm oven-safe frying pan (we use Skeppshult)

Pizza topping ideas and recipes

How you top your pizza depends on the flavours you love. Try one of our recipes below:

  1. Keep it classic by sticking to tomatoes, mozzarella and basil (a Margherita), or add a fiery kick with ’nduja and peppery rocket leaves.
  2. Thinly sliced mushrooms add an umami flavour which, when paired with truffle oil, makes for an earthy and deeply savoury pizza.
  3. If you’re after a meaty texture, try adding cooked, crumbled sausage meat on top of the tomato sauce, alongside friarielli broccoli

Ingredients for the frying pan pizza dough Serves: 4


Ingredients for pizza sauce


Method for frying pan pizza dough

  1. Mix the flour, yeast and salt together in a large mixing bowl. Pour in the milk and warm water (it can be warmer than that you’d use for homemade bread, as the cold milk will cool it down), malt extract and olive oil. Mix well with your hands, squeezing the dough between your fingers to ensure everything is well incorporated. Cover with a plate, and set aside for 20 minutes.
  2. Now, gently ‘knead’ the dough while it’s still in the mixing bowl. Stretch one edge of the dough 10-20cm into the air, and fold back over the centre. Rotate your bowl by 90 degrees, and do the same again. Repeat 5-10 times. The dough will feel like it could easily break apart, but will tighten up as you go. Cover and leave for 20 minutes.
  3. Repeat the lift and fold process 2-3 more times, 20 minutes apart. Each time you’ll notice the dough becoming more elastic and smoother to work with. 
  4. Two hours after first mixing the dough, it’s time to shape it. Lift out of the bowl and, using a knife or dough scraper, divide into four equal pieces. Take your first piece of dough and fold any corners into the centre - like an origami fortune teller! It should look more circular. Flip each shaped dough piece over, so the smooth base is on top, and rotate gently between your hands to turn it into a sphere. Set aside on a piece of parchment and shape the next piece. When all four pieces have been shaped, cover with oiled cling film or a damp tea towel and set aside to rise for an hour. 
© Speciality Cooking Supplies Limited 2024

Method for pizza sauce

  1. Tip the San Marzano tomatoes and juice into a bowl, then use your hands to crush them. Discard the hard yellow stem from each tomato. Set aside.
© Speciality Cooking Supplies Limited 2024

Frying Pan Pizza




9 comments

  • And btw! The yeast in this recipe possibly gets its ‘sugar hit’ from the ‘lactose’ in the milk (if used) – but a teaspoon of sugar will increase the ‘rise’. It’s also worth remembering to go easy on the salt for the base. Salt kills the action of yeast. So it’s better to save it for the topping. However this recipe is excellent

    Charlie on

  • Dear Nigel – don’t forget if you are using fresh yeast (and even dried yeast) you need to ‘provoke’ it into life with warm water (or milk) to stimulate its ‘levening’ properties. This require a teaspoon of sugar to start it, either in the jug – or within the dough. That’s why you set it aside to ‘rise’. It needs warmth, sugar and TLC to give a nice puffy pizza base – OO flour will ensure the best, slightly chewy – but crispy base. Fresh yeast is also much better! The aroma from the fresh yeast let’s you drift dreamily into the Naples countryside – as will the other aromas from your pizza remind you of the amazing pizzarias all around Naples! Don’t forget to brush the pizza ‘crust’ with olive oil before you transfer it under the grill (plenty of basil and/or basil-infused olive oil is a must) – and the pizza crust will be the right sort of crispy (Only cook to a medium ‘Maillard’ brown). Also a light brush of olive oil to the frying pan before you place in the dough – will also ensure a crispy base – again just a medium ‘Maillard’ brown – checked by using a ‘slice’ to lift and check. These frying-pan pizzas get very close to pizzeria produced pizzas – very cheaply (easily paying for an oven-proof frying pan) and for just pence for the 3min gas hob cook – and 7 minutes under the oven grill. An important consideration in these ‘cost-of-living’ times. Good luck!

    Charlie on

  • Hi, can you tell me where l can get good quality Italian sausage please?

    Paul Harman on

  • Hi Andrew. We haven’t tested that recipe, but replacing the milk with warm water should still produce a dough. It might have a slightly different texture and flavour though. Please do let us know how you get on!

    Holly at Sous Chef on

  • Hi. Could the base be made without milk to keep it dairy free?

    Andrew on

  • Hello. Of course, for this recipe it’s dried yeast!

    Ellie @ Sous Chef on

  • Please, Could you tell me if i should use fresh or instant yeast. Thank you.

    Izabela on

  • Hi Nigel, absolutely, we’re big fans of the pizza peel and stone method (and even sell the equipment ourselves!). This method is just another alternative way to cook the pizzas. We’ve just added a little malt syrup to make a great-tasting dough, it shouldn’t impart too much sweetness on the final pizza!

    Ellie @ Sous Chef on

  • Hi Nicola you mentioned the high price of pizza ovens but I use a pizza stone and pizza peel. A small investment in comparison to your pizza frying pan. Using a little Polenta does the trick. I’ve had no complaints with my pizzas. Also surely using malt extract is adding sweetness to the dough which I’m not keen on . A commercial chef gave me his recipe but I’ve taken out the sugar as it’s not to our taste. Everyone to their own I guess.

    NIgel Crump on

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