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What is the best way to warm up pizza?

We tested nine methods, so you no longer need to do this.

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Take a close look at this. In the morning she will not look so good.

Order pizza, and there is a high probability that it will disappear within a few hours. Something in this round wheel of dough, cream cheese, warm tomato sauce and seemingly countless options for the filling is simply irresistible. If only pizza always remained that way.

However, it is difficult to resist the temptation to eat the remaining pieces when you rummage in the refrigerator the next day. Maybe you like cold pizza - there is nothing shameful about it - but if you want to restore the magic of fresh pizza by warming it, then you need to know what needs to be done.

So, the Popular Science team specializing in independent work has tracked down the most popular strategies, bought a lot of pizza and tested them. We were looking for the best option.

But first - decay, loss of freshness and spoilage


At the very moment when pizza is born from the oven, it is too hot to eat, and may not even be cooked. But at about 140 degrees Fahrenheit, experts recommend starting to eat it greedily, but don’t burn your mouth, at this moment it begins its inevitable path to complete decomposition, like everything else on Earth.

If you cannot (or do not want) to eat pizza when it is fresh, all you can do later is to control the damage. You see, cheese loves to melt only once, because when it does, it loses its integrity. When exposed to high temperatures, the cheese loses fat and water, and it is simply impossible to return it back.

“This water does not rise,” said pastry and pizza expert Francisco Migoya, chef at Modernist Cuisine. "The dough is like a sponge, so it just absorbs all this, becoming wet and sticky over time."

At this point, moisture from the sauce and water, as well as fat from the cheese (and any meat) begins to seep into the crust, creating what pizza experts call the “gum line” - a layer between the sauce and the crust that looks like raw dough. The thicker the pizza, the more pronounced the gum line will be, and the longer the pizza will remain untouched, the thicker it will become. This forever changes the crust, says Chef Migoy.

Never leave pizza on the surface of the kitchen or in the oven at night (due to bacteria), but if you put it in the refrigerator, it will not lead to anything. Low temperatures freeze everything that has absorbed the dough and accelerate the process of losing freshness or retrograde. In short, the starch in the crust recrystallizes, and all the freshness of pizza was blown away by the wind.

How we did it


PopSci is located in New York, so we tested each method using the thin-crust pizza that the Big Apple is famous for. If you reheat a Chicago-style deep dish pizza or other dishes, your results may vary.

The pieces we used (with ordinary cheese and pepperoni) were spent from 12 to 48 hours in the refrigerator. Warming up frozen pizza is a completely different story, and we can't talk about it here.

Let the game begin.

Highest level


Favorite version of social users. network reddit


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The light does not allow to pay tribute to this amazing preheated piece of pizza, but there is a reason why this is the favorite method of Reddit users.

The official heating method, according to users of subreddit / r / pizza , requires placing cold pizza in a non-stick pan and cooking it for two minutes over medium heat (or until the bottom of the slice becomes crispy). Then pour two drops of water (less than a teaspoon) into the pan as far as possible from the pizza. Cover the pan and reduce heat. Cook for another minute.

Result


You can try cooking on a cast-iron skillet, but we have found that a standard non-stick skillet does this best. The crust was crispy, the cheese (thanks to the steam of water circulating under the lid) melted perfectly, and the slice was at the ideal temperature to eat immediately.

However, using a cast-iron frying pan enhances a number of factors that you might not want to deal with when heating a bite. Depending on the type of oven you have, heating a metal pan with a thick bottom may seem like an eternity. And if the pan is not heated enough, then throwing a cold slice on a hot, dry iron is a direct way to the burnt crust (more on this later). Even if you heat a frying pan with a thin layer of oil, the crust will become very crispy before the cheese melts.

Hot tray in a hot oven


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Hot and almost like new.

Place the pan in the oven and heat it to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. If you do not want to wash the pan later, you can cover it with foil. When the oven reaches the desired temperature, use the handle to remove the hot pan and place slices on it. Place the pan on the middle rack and cook the pizza for five minutes.

Result


We had to let the pizza cool for a minute or two before it could be eaten, but when it was in our mouths, we felt a great crisp, cream cheese and a piece that was almost like new.

You can also play with different temperatures, but you should always make sure that the pan heats up with the oven. We tried to cook at 375 degrees for 10 minutes, and although the first bite was crispy and tasted great, the bite became harder to chew as it cooled - it became like a cracker, not a pizza. The cheese on a regular slice was fairly dehydrated, but pepperoni was good - the fat in the meat probably helped the cheese stay moist. The crust on a pepperoni slice was also better: there was the right amount of filling and it was not difficult to chew, because the slice was thicker.

Middle level


Bake again


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If you use this method, put the pizza on the foil. Putting it directly in the oven, you risk starting a fire.

This method meant putting pizza directly into your oven, but Chef Migoya strongly did not recommend it. “There is no food that I would just put in the oven,” he says in horror. “The risk of cheese melting is too great, and all this fat in a hot environment is ideal for the appearance of fire in your oven. You don’t need it.

We did it anyway. Purely for scientific reasons (with a sheet of aluminum foil on the rack below to catch drops and, I hope, prevent a fire). But you should definitely not try to do this.

Result


The best interpretation of this strategy was baking pizza on a sheet of foil (directly on a rack) at a temperature of 450 degrees for five minutes. The crust was crispy, the cheese was warm - hard throughout the piece, but not as good as when baking it on a hot baking sheet. You can also cook pizza at 350 degrees for 10 minutes for a slightly less crispy slice, at your discretion. Our worst results with this method were when we put the pizza directly on the grill of the oven. We did not make a fire (we had a fire extinguisher at hand), but the crust was unevenly prepared due to the lack of a solid heated surface under it.

Combination “Microwave + Oven”


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Looks pretty sad, doesn't it? After putting in the oven, the situation improved slightly.

We were skeptical of this technique, but it surprised us. First put the pizza in the microwave for 30 seconds. Then put the pizza on a baking sheet in a cold oven and set it to heat to 350 degrees. As soon as the oven informs you that it has already warmed up - when you usually put food - take out the pizza.

Result


After we got the pizza out of the microwave, the pizza was very rubber. Not a good start. We doubted that the power of the oven would be able to restore it even to a fraction of its original glory. But it happened. When baking pizza, it was quite well browned and the effect of rubber pizza was removed. The thicker parts of the crust remained somewhat flexible, but that was enough. However, we are not sure that anyone would choose this method by throwing pizza on a hot baking sheet that was in the oven, except that this method can be a little faster. Although not very.

At low temperature and slowly in the oven


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Put slices of cold pizza on a baking sheet and cover them tightly with aluminum foil. Place them on the lowest shelf of your oven and set the temperature to 275 degrees. Let the pizza bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Result


The crust on the cheese slice was crispy, but the pepperoni slice was too rubbery, probably due to the excess fat from the pepper. Aesthetically, none of them looked too good: the cheese was soft, but after removing it from the oven, it dried quite quickly, and the sauce looked like one big wart. It is also one of the most time-consuming methods we tested. As for the general taste, it was still good.

Worst methods


Very hot pan


imageThis photo is to blame for the fact that the photographer tried not to burn his apartment.

Heat the pan on the stove over high heat for a couple of minutes until it becomes very hot. Add pizza and lower the temperature to medium. Cook for two or three minutes.

Result


We tried this method with both a porcelain non-stick pan and a cast-iron pan, but the results were equally disappointing. Pizza in a frying pan with a non-stick coating had to be removed from the fire after only a minute and a half. The cheese was bubbling, and the crust burned and stuck to the pan. Cleaning was a nightmare. We do not recommend this method.

Everything was even worse in the cast-iron pan. In a dry frying pan, the crust began to burn as soon as it hit a hot metal. The smell of a catastrophically burned dough hung heavily in the air for several hours. Somehow the pizza was still cold on top. If hell ever freezes, and we have the opportunity to try it, then this is probably what it will look like: burning, burned and covered with a layer of cold frozen fat.

We oiled a cast-iron pan to give this strategy a second chance, and the pizza did not immediately start to burn - it took about three minutes. The crust was better (maybe too crispy), but the cheese on top was still warm at best.

Microwave with a glass of water


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Just put the pizza in the microwave with a glass of water and heat them for a minute.

Result


No, just not. The pizza tasted like rubber, the outside was too hot and the inside was still cold. Yes, the cheese didn’t look so disgusting compared to putting the pizza in the microwave without a glass of water, but it is still inedible.

Microwave loop


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This is just sad. And infuriates, to be honest.

Set the microwave to 30 or 40 percent power and heat the pizza for 45 seconds. Check it out and repeat these steps as often as necessary.

Result


The crust was sticky, not crispy at all. The cheese melted, but was very dehydrated, so it did not have a pronounced taste, and its consistency was elastic at best. There was no difference between pizza with cheese and pepperoni, both tasted as if they were heated in the microwave for two minutes.

Share your methods in the comments!

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