Every time I load up my pizza with toppings it ends up a soggy mess.
How can I strike the right balance between a variety of toppings without compromising the pizza’s overall texture?
Seeking guidance from fellow pizza aficionados for the perfect topping equation!
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Don’t overload. Most Italian pizze (save for Roman-style abbondanza) are sparse with their ingredients: just enough sauce or fresh tomatoes, a little cheese, and maybe 3 toppings at the most.
Also make sure your crust is properly baked through.
This is a good example: https://www.nonnabox.com/authentic-italian-pizza-dough-recipe/
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Wot she said.
I take the view that the toppings, like the tomato sauce and cheese, are mainly flavourings for the dough and, as such, are used sparingly.
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What are your favorite pizza toppings? What do you think might be giving you trouble? Specific ingredients can also make a difference, in terms of how much and when you place them on your pizza.
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I usually don’t put over 2 toppings on a pizza when I make it. Sausage & Onion or Black Olives and Onion.
Find two toppings you like that go together and limit your pizza to just those two toppings.
If you just can’t decide on two toppings, then do a half and half pizza.
My mother used to do “halfsies” with my sister and I (when we were kids). Mom would put my two favorites on my side of the pizza and my sister got her favorites on her side, the blended middle was eaten by Mom & Dad.
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Don’t be afraid to show some skin. Your uncooked pizza that is. A little bit of uncovered dough showing through the toppings is perfectly fine, especially in the center where one is prone to overloading.
I like a THIN coat of white sauce, sauteed mushrooms, spicy crumbled italian sausage, herbs, a little bit of grated cheese.
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Restraint. Resist the urge to put what looks like the right amount of any one topping if you’re doing multiple toppings. It’s easy to overdo it. This goes doubly so for things that have a lot of moisture in them, like mushrooms. Too many mushrooms (it doesn’t take much) will turn your crust into a soggy mess.
I usually sauté the shrooms before throwing them on the pizza to get rid of excess moisture (they also have more flavor that way), but I’ve also had success with shaved raw mushrooms. It’s a different flavor and mouthfeel & can add a nice, peppery bite to a spinach pizza (the spinach ideally being baby spinach & used sparsely, since that’s also a water-logged topping).
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When we were newlyweds, my bride wanted to try her hand at making pizza. Asked how I wanted her first effort. I asked for a simple Margherita, stressed light on topping and thin crust. A short time later.
I was speechless!!!
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I assume your wife had previously encountered or at least seen a picture of a margherita?
If the OP insists on larding on the toppings, treating the pizza like a plate of fast food nachos, then the solution is to make the crust more sturdy.
The best way to do that, short of making a deep dish pizza, is to use cornmeal in the crust (as opposed to semolina flour), or a combination of cornmeal and flour.
Cornmeal with provide a bit more crunch and crispier exterior, creating a more resistant layer upon which to layer on the toppings.
But as others have said, when it comes to toppings, less is more, more is not more.
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Oh yea. She has a FOMO problem with food.
She always has to over order, over load and over buy when it comes to food. Yesterday, we LOADED up at Marina Foods (Taiwanese supermarket), Costco, and Hankook (Korean supermarket).
Rain forecast for the next four days. No worries about having enough food on hand, we won’t starve. 
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Experience is the best teacher. We have a pizza oven in the country. We have to stand over guests while they construct their own pizzas and warn them off over-loading. One guest was surprised to find that his pizza morphed into a calzone when he tried to turn it in the oven. Ooops.
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Don’t feel so bad – there are lots of types of pizza and lots of variance in quantity of toppings.
As @ipsedixit (sort of) said, it’s more about whether your crust and your toppings are a match for each other. As in, a thin, neapolitan-style crust can barely hold up sauce and a bit of cheese before it collapses, whereas a New York-style crust is sturdy enough to support a whole layer of ziti 
(And then, of course, there’s a Chicago pie that you could load up with as much sausage as it will hold.)
Personally, I like enough topping that I get a some in every bite – I don’t want 1.5 pieces of pepperoni on a whole slice. But even distribution is key to not having a loaded center.
You might enjoy a look at these past pizza threads (with plenty of topping loading going on) or join in with your experiments on the current Dish of the Quarter thread, which happens to be on Pizza.
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there’s two mega-issues not covered in the discussion.
#1 - the pizza dough
has to be high hydration - i.e. % of flour to liquid “i.e. water” must be high.
if you are wimping out with a really wet dough ‘cause it’s easy to work with’ - not good.
#2 - bottom heat is absolutely essential to a crisp pizza crust.
I use a ceramic round plate; steel plates are also popular&heavy.
a minimum one hour preheat at max oven temp is required.
ever been to a pizza place that starts your pie in a cold oven?
thinking ‘everything is preheated’ when the oven beeps . . . not such a good idea.
we only do homemade pizza. mostly as the “sauce” I use is thick stewed tomato and not ketchup tasting commercial preps.
when sliced, this crust ‘snaps’ - some toppings applied…
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I think you mean “if you are wimping out with a really DRY dough.” That said, you can have a sturdy pizza with either high or low(er) hydration dough. In fact, if you are doing a thinner crust (e.g. a NY style or Neapolitan style), your crust will be sturdier at a lower hydration, all else being equal. If you go with a thick, focaccia-like crust (think Grandma, Sicilian, Detroit-style, etc.), you’ll be using a very high hydration dough by default, but as long as you bake it properly, it will end up sturdy simply by virtue of its thickness. And let’s not even get started on gluten development, sauce consistency, etc. Lots of variables in this equation!
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I’m going to go against the flow and say I love a fully loaded pizza. My husband and I used to order delivery pizza from a shop in our old neighborhood that had numerous toppings, their special. That is what we try to replicate at home. FWIW, that restaurant had been around for a very long time and was opened by Italian immigrants. I keep intending to make a more “authentic” Margaretta type but I end up making my typical everything one. Sometimes it comes out soggy but we still like it. I heat up the oven and pizza stone hot and long. I also cook the pizza much longer than most people do so the crust has more time to cook. I let the top and crust burn a little. Caramelized, as some like to say. If I did not consider pizza my lazy cooking night meal, I would consider baking the crust a little before topping it. That might help you with sogginess issues.
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I appreciate almost all types. Lots of toppings, less toppings, more cheese, less cheese, no cheese, white /red.
Sturdy or flimsy, doughy or thin. Crispy .
I don’t like hard cracker type crusts as much. I’d probably still eat it, though. 
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Same. I can appreciate the balance of a lightly topped Neapolitan from an aesthetic, cheffy standpoint, but if I’m eating it, I really prefer a higher cheese to crust ratio no matter what the style.
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