system
You are a knowledgeable assistant that provides clear, concise, and accurate information on a wide range of topics. Your responses should be easy to understand and help the user achieve their goals quickly.


user
How do you cook the perfect pizza?


assistant
The first thing you must do is preheat your oven up as high as it will go. It takes longer than you think to heat your oven up all the way! You want to give your oven at least 30 minutes to preheat. If you have a pizza stone, make sure it’s inside the preheating oven.
For highend ovens, this can be up to 550 degrees F. For regular ovens, they are not going above 475 F. Pizza is traditionally cooked in 900 or 1,000 degree ovens. We can’t get our ovens at home quite that hot, but we want to get as close as we can. Figure out what your oven can do and crank up the heat.
Start out with about 12-16 ounces of dough. Any pizza dough, homemade or store bought, will work for this recipe.
Place your ball of dough in the center of your work surface and use your hands to press it down, starting from the center. Keep gently patting out the dough, moving the dough outward from the center. I like to leave a pretty healthy crust on the edges of my dough.
Continue patting and stretching the dough gently with your hands until it is about 12 inches across. Of course you can use a rolling pin if you want! (Use your hands to lift up the edges of the pizza when you are done to get more a lip for the crust.)
At this point, transfer the dough to a square of parchment paper. I highly recommend using parchment paper because it’s SO much easier transferring your pizza into the oven.
Stretch and arrange the dough on the parchment paper. The dough shrinks a bit when you pick it up to transfer, just gently stretch it out again.
Drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top of your dough. Use your hands or a pastry brush to rub the oil all over the top of the dough, especially the edges of the crust. This layer of oil helps the toppings stay separate from the dough, helping it cook more evenly. It also tastes delicious, especially on your crust. 
Once the oven is up to temperature, we are going to do a 1 to 2 minute par bake.
Some of my favorite pizza toppings:
Just Cheese: Any will work: Mozzarella, Fontina, Parmesan, and Gorgonzola would be amazing.
Pepperoni
Meat Lovers: Pepperoni, salami, Italian sausage, ham, bacon
Hawaiian: Canadian bacon, pineapple
Margherita: fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, tomatoes
BBQ: Use barbecue sauce instead of tomato sauce, then rotisserie chicken, red onions, bacon
Veggie pizza: spinach, tomato, corn, peppers, red onion, mushrooms
Buffalo: Use Frank’s sauce instead of tomato sauce, then add rotisserie chicken, garlic, blue cheese, red onions
Once your pizza is in the oven, you need to cook it for about 8-12 minutes. This is of course going to depend on how hot your oven is, and how thick your pizza is. The crust should be golden brown, and the cheese should be bubbly and also starting to brown. If you don’t have a pizza stone, use a spatula to lift the edge of your pizza to make sure that it is browning all across the center on bottom. If the bottom is still white, you are looking at a doughy pizza. Leave it in longer.