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- High-quality pizza pans heat evenly to produce excellent crust, are easy to clean, and make pulling your pizza in and out of the oven a breeze.
- The $4 is our top pick because it's made of durable cast iron that heats evenly, is nonstick, and cleans up effortlessly.
Few things in this life are more beautiful than a homemade pizza fresh out of the oven. Still, there's the breath-holding moment as you cut into the pie hoping to feel and hear the telltale crunch that lets you know the crust is done just right. The best way to ensure that the crust and toppings reach perfection at the same time is to use a top-quality pizza pan.
Pizza pans are generally made of cast iron, aluminum, stainless steel, or a combination of aluminum and steel. Cast iron pans are heavier and add a deeper, richer flavor to the crust. But, you need to be careful that you season the surface of the pan and avoid cleaning it with detergent. Stainless steel pans are durable and inexpensive, but they tend to burn pizzas easily. Aluminum is durable, simple to clean, and heats evenly. Lastly, aluminized steel combines the benefits of aluminum and steel to cook pizza evenly and produce a crispy crust.
Two of the pans in our guide are perforated, which is to say they have holes in the bottom. The holes allow heat to hit the crust directly during baking, which causes the crust to get crispier. The pizza also cooks more quickly with perforated pans. If crispy crust and fast cooking times sound appealing, consider a perforated pan.
The hue of the pan also affects the cooking time. Darker pans tend to absorb the oven's heat better, and this helps your pizza cook faster, but this is not always a good thing. When you have deep dish, stuffed, or other thicker pizzas, you don't want the crust to cook too quickly, or else, it could burn before the toppings are cooked all the way through. In this instance, a lighter-colored pan would be preferable.
In this guide, we are specifically focusing on pizza pans. Previously, we covered pizza stones>$4, which are excellent for pizza baking but tend to cost more. We thought pans and stones deserved separate guides. However, our top pick, the Lodge Cast Iron Pizza Pan, straddles the hazy line between the two so we chose to include it on both lists.
While researching the best pizza pans, we read through hundreds of buyer and expert ratings and reviews of dozens of models. Our guide features pans that have a track record of performance, durability, and ease of use.
Here are the best pizza pans you can buy:
- Best pizza pan overall: $4
- Best deep-dish pizza pan: $4
- Best mini pizza pan: $4
- Best pizza pan for maneuverability: $4
- Best affordable pizza pan: $4
Read on in the slides below to check out our top picks.
$4
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