New York pizza at home

Dough, sauce and baking from Dough Guy's Shorts and calculator, gathered in one place for a 500°F oven, a steel and a peel.

These are unofficial personal notes on the method taught by Sam, who posts as Dough Guy. Claude compiled them. This page isn't made by, or affiliated with, Dough Guy, though its colors and fonts are modeled on his site. Yellow-striped boxes and anything labelled "mine" are Claude's suggestions, not Sam's.

Start three days ahead

  1. 3 days before

    Mix the dough, rest it, shape the balls and refrigerate them.

    About 10 minutes of hands-on work, plus 11 minutes in the mixer and a 1 to 2 hour rest.

  2. 5 hours before

    Take the dough out of the fridge and leave it covered on the counter.

    Sam's newest advice is 4 to 5 hours. It's ready when a poke doesn't spring back.

  3. 1 hour before

    Put the steel in the top third of the oven and set it to 500°F.

    Make the sauce and grate the cheese while it heats.

  4. Bake time

    Stretch, top, launch and bake.

    Sam bakes for 6 to 8 minutes at 550°F. My guess for 500°F is 8 to 10.

Dough

Sam makes 16" pizzas, and his steel is 16 × 16". My suggestion: if yours is smaller, pick a size an inch or two under the steel's width so the launch has room.

Thickness
368 g
per dough ball
4 balls, 14", regular
IngredientWeightBaker's %
Sauce per pizza: 6 Tbsp (about 95 g), scaled from Sam's ½ cup on a 16"
Mozzarella per pizza: about 140 g, scaled from Sam's 184 g on a 16"
Pecorino and parmesan: about 8 g each, scaled from his 10 g
Bake: 6 to 8 minutes

Make the dough

  1. Weigh the cold water into the mixer bowl. Sam aims for about 40°F. If your water isn't that cold, swap up to a quarter of its weight for ice, counting the ice as part of the total.
  2. Add the yeast, flour and olive oil. Weigh the salt and sugar separately and set them aside.
  3. Start the mixer on low with the dough hook and set a timer for 11 minutes.
  4. After 2 minutes, add the salt and sugar. Let it run for the rest of the time.
  5. Check the dough temperature. Aim for about 70°F, and no higher than 74°F.
  6. Knead briefly into a ball, return it to the bowl, cover and rest for 1 to 2 hours.
  7. Cut pieces to the ball weight on the ticket. Fold the edges in on all sides, then pinch the seam shut like a dumpling. Pat each ball with wet hands so it doesn't dry out.
  8. Put each ball in a sealable container coated with olive oil or nonstick spray.
  9. Refrigerate for 3 to 5 days.

Longer is fine. Sam says the dough stays good for up to about a week, and it gets easier to stretch with time. It also browns faster: he bakes week-old dough for 5 to 6 minutes.

Flour. Use bread flour, with 12 to 14% protein. In Sam's five-brand test from October 2026, Gold Medal and Lehi Mills were his favorites, the least sticky and the best at holding their shape. He also lists King Arthur among the flours he uses. Any bread flour made good pizza, but the others needed a couple of extra stretch and folds.

Sugar. It's there to brown the crust and doesn't make it sweet.

Sam's technique has changed over time, so where his sources disagree this page follows the newest. His calculator page still says 2 to 4 days cold, a rest of 1 to 3 hours and water under 60°F. The steps here come from his September 2026 dough video, whose 6 × 16" recipe matches the calculator gram for gram.

Sauce

You don't cook it, and it takes about 2 minutes. Sam mixes it right in the can.

Current go-to New York sauce

  • 28 oz can crushed or whole peeled tomatoes
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp oregano
  • 3 tsp dried basil, or fresh if you have it
  • 1 tsp sugar, or a pinch of baking soda, to balance acidity (optional)

Mix it up. If it's chunky, use an immersion blender on low for just a couple of seconds, since you don't want to over-blend it.

Older simple sauce, from 2025

  • 1 can tomatoes
  • 4 g salt
  • Splash of olive oil, optional

Blend. Then add oregano, basil or garlic to the pizza under the cheese, so you can change them pie to pie.

Tomatoes: Sam's favorite is Bianco DiNapoli, sold at Target and Whole Foods, and he has made plenty of pizzas with Cento too.

Storage: Keep it in the can under plastic wrap or in a sealed container for about a week in the fridge. Freeze whatever you won't use by then.

Not from Sam: yield and salt By my math, a 28 oz can makes roughly 3¼ cups, enough for about six 16" pizzas. Sam's older simple version has about a third of the salt, so taste the go-to version and adjust to your tomatoes.

Build and bake

  1. Warm the dough

    Leave it out, untouched, for 4 to 5 hours. A cold ball is small and firm and springs back. It's ready when you poke it and it doesn't spring back. In a hurry, put it in the turned-off oven with the light on for 1 to 2 hours, and take it out before you preheat.

  2. Heat the steel

    Put the steel in the top third of the oven, leaving enough room to launch. Sam's is usually on the second rack position. Preheat at the oven's highest setting for 45 minutes to an hour. Your oven reaching temperature doesn't mean the steel has.

    Not from Sam: at 500°F, use the full hourSam's oven tops out at 550°F, so yours has 50° less to work with. A full preheat helps make up the difference.

  3. Prep the toppings

    Use low-moisture mozzarella and shred it yourself, since the coating on pre-shredded melts less well. Sam blends whole milk and part-skim 50/50: whole milk melts and tastes better, and part-skim browns more. Grande is his top brand, and he mostly buys from Trader Joe's. In a late October video, he says he really likes cubed cheese too.

  4. Stretch

    Flour the counter and coat both sides of the dough. With your fingertips, form a crust just inside the edge and press the air out of the middle. Flip and repeat until it's a bit bigger than your hand.

    Shake off the excess flour. Drape the edge over your knuckles and turn it slowly, letting gravity pull it down. Watch for thin spots and stay away from them, because a thin center bakes up soggy. If it tears, pinch it closed.

  5. Top it on the peel

    Spread a thin layer of semolina on the peel. Regular flour works too, but tends to burn. Sam recommends a wooden peel, and assembling right on it. Lay the dough down and shape it into a circle.

    Pour on the sauce and quickly spiral it out from the middle so it doesn't pool. Add a pinch of pecorino Romano on the sauce, then low-moisture mozzarella. Sam's pizza takes about a handful, and some sauce should still show. Add a few pieces of fresh mozzarella for taste, but not many, because of the water. If the dough shrank back, the toppings' weight now lets you stretch it into place with your fingers.

  6. Launch

    Shake the peel at the start, middle and end of topping to check it's loose. Come in almost flat over the steel, shake until the pizza starts to slide off, and pull the peel out. A steep angle sends the toppings sliding.

  7. Bake

    Bake using the times in the table. Sam often turns on the broiler for the last 1 to 2 minutes for extra char on top. His October tests at 550°F ran 7 minutes plus 1 under the broiler, and 6 plus 1 on the steel after a 45-minute preheat.

  8. Finish

    Move the pizza to a wire rack for a minute or two so it doesn't go soggy. Sam finishes with extra virgin olive oil on the crust and parmesan.

ThicknessSam's ovenSam's time
Thin550°F4 to 5 min
Regular550°F6 to 8 min
Thick450°F10 to 12 min
Not from Sam: baking at 500°F I couldn't find a 500°F time from Sam. My untested guess for a regular pizza is 8 to 10 minutes, including 1 under the broiler if the top needs it. Judge by color, and write down what works for your oven. Let the steel reheat for about 10 minutes between pizzas.

Sam's weights for a 16" plain pizza

  • 480 g dough ball, regular thickness
  • ½ cup sauce
  • 10 g pecorino Romano
  • 184 g low-moisture mozzarella, "pretty much a whole handful"
  • 2.5 g olive oil, after baking
  • 10 g parmesan, after baking

From his July 2026 calories video, where he weighed everything. He normally measures the cheese by eye. He counts the whole pizza at about 1,750 calories, or 220 per slice.

Check your oven. Sam suggests testing with an oven thermometer. Some ovens can be recalibrated, as your manual will explain. He notes this could raise the maximum by about 30°F in theory, but says he isn't recommending it.

If something goes wrong

The dough snaps back

It's almost always too cold. Give it more time on the counter and use the poke test.

The dough is sticky

Don't add more flour. Check your water weight, including the ice. Then do 2 or 3 stretch and folds, 30 minutes apart. If it's still wet, use a little less water next time. Dough that turns sticky later may be over-fermented.

The pizza sticks to the peel

Lift the crust at that spot and give it a quick blow, or puff air under it with an empty squeeze bottle. That moves the semolina back under the dough.

The launch missed

Bake for a minute until the crust hardens, then reposition it.

The bottom burns before the top is done

Move the steel up a rack.

The bottom is pale

Move the steel down a rack, and make sure it had a full preheat.

The center is soggy or floppy

Use less sauce and fewer toppings, and avoid thin spots in the center. Sam's rule is that you should still see some sauce.

Sources

Everything not marked as mine comes from Sam's site or Shorts. Watch these for the hand movements, especially stretching and launching.

Compiled from the site's calculator code, video descriptions and auto-generated transcripts of 24 of his roughly 150 Shorts. The other videos haven't been checked. Transcripts don't capture what Sam only shows on screen, so some of those details may be missing.