Pizza is always a winner and is the ultimate choice when you don’t want to cook something complicated.
It’s frustrating when the pizza comes out of the oven undercooked though because nothing compares to a golden brown crispy crust, hot oozy filling, and well-melted strings of mozzarella.
Remember, it is possible for the cheese on top of the pizza to be well melted yet the base still undercooked. This is why it’s important to check every element before serving the pizza, especially if you are cooking it from frozen and it’s quite a thick one.
If you are unsure how to tell if a pizza is undercooked, we’re here to fill you in.
How To Tell If Pizza Is Undercooked
While eating undercooked pizza is frustrating, it can also be dangerous because of food-borne illnesses. Certain germs are only killed by high cooking temperatures.
This is why, before you bite into the pizza, you must always check if it is cooked all the way through, especially if it is topped with seafood or meat. This will ensure you don’t end up with stomach issues. Are you ready to check out the symptoms of undercooked pizza?
- Raw parts on the base
The first thing you need to do is check for any raw dough on the pizza. Since the top side will be topped with cheese, veggies, and other ingredients, you’ll need to check out the pizza’s bottom.
To do this, carefully lift up the pizza on one side with a spatula or egg lifter and have a look at the bottom. If the base has a golden brown appearance and the edges are crispy, the pizza is well cooked.
On the contrary, if the crust seems white or pale golden, it’s undercooked and needs to be cooked for longer.
- Sauce too much
Another way to tell if your pizza is uncooked is by looking at the amount of sauce on it. A lot of sauce is a clue that the pizza will need longer than usual in the oven.
Although sauce tastes amazing, it isn’t worth adding too much to a homemade pizza as it increases the cooking time and oozes everywhere, making the pizza messy to eat. Hold back on the sauce to ensure the pizza comes out well cooked.
- Excessive toppings
A huge pile of ingredients on top of the base is a clue that the pizza is possibly undercooked. Whenever you pile too many ingredients onto the pizza dough, it has a higher chance of coming out undercooked.
In the majority of cases, the pizza will be left unevenly cooked or undercooked in the center although the cheese is golden and the base looks done. Real Italian pizzas are topped with just one or two ingredients so we can learn from this.
If the pizza crust is thin while the topping layer is thick, it results in undercooked pizza. The only way to fix this is to give the pizza extra time in the oven to give the heat time to penetrate through all the topping layers.
How to Not Make Undercooked Pizza in Future
While the only way to fix an undercooked pizza is to cook it for longer, you obviously want to prevent this from happening in the future. Here are a few ways to prevent the problem:
- Set the oven to the highest temperature it can go. The oven must be up to this temperature before putting the pizza in. The best temperature is around 500 degrees.
- Set the oven rack in the center of the oven. This will prevent the top from burning (if the rack is on the top shelf) or the bottom from burning (if the rack is on the bottom shelf) while the rest of the pizza remains undercooked.
- Preheat a clay tile or pizza stone to cook the pizza on. If you don’t have one, invert a metal baking sheet. This will ensure a crisp, evenly cooked base.
- If you are cooking thick pizzas with a lot of toppings, defrost them before cooking them if they’re frozen.
- If your toppings include something you don’t normally eat raw, such as mushrooms, bacon, chicken bits, or onions, pre-cook them in a pan before using them as a pizza topping.
- Keep your toppings simple and few, as the Italians do!
- Cook the pizza until the cheese is golden brown, and the edges of the base are crispy and dark brown. We suggest baking it for 5-6 minutes, removing it and rotating it for even cooking, then returning it to the oven for a further 3-5 minutes. Rather go according to the pizza’s appearance than the time. If it doesn’t look cooked, it probably isn’t! Pizza normally takes between 5 and 10 minutes to cook in a very hot oven.
