Got a few slices of leftover pizza calling your name? Well, hold your horses — because there's a right and a wrong way when it comes to heating it up again.
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00:00Got a few slices of leftover pizza calling your name? Well, hold your horses, because
00:04there's a right and a wrong way when it comes to heating it up again.
00:08"...pizza time."
00:10The stove is a useful option if you only have a couple of pizza slices to reheat, as skillets
00:16tend to be super handy and don't take too long to heat up. There are two ways to go
00:20about this method. The kitchen recommends finding a pan large enough to fit at least
00:23an entire slice of pizza. Then, cover the pan with either a lid or a piece of foil before
00:28heating the pizza on a medium flame. After six minutes, the crust will be crispy, and
00:33the cheese will melt from the steam trapped inside the pan.
00:36Food52 adds another step to this method. Once you've placed the pizza over medium heat and
00:40crisped up the crust for a couple of minutes, you should add a few drops of water to the
00:44pan before covering the slice with a lid. Reduce the heat to low, and just a minute
00:48or two later, you'll have yourself a pizza slice that'll seem like it's fresh out of
00:52the oven.
00:54Considering that an air fryer is basically a mini version of a convection oven, you can
00:57absolutely use one to reheat your leftover pizza. Popular Science recommends placing
01:02your pizza into a cold air fryer before setting the temperature to somewhere between 360 and
01:07400 degrees Fahrenheit. The exact temperature and cook time will vary based on different
01:11brands of air fryers and the toppings on your pizza. Let the pizza heat up along with the
01:15air fryer for about five minutes. It should come out with a crispy crust and melted cheese.
01:20Since there's no preheating required, this is one of the quickest ways to get a hot slice
01:24of pizza in your hand.
01:25The one downside to this method, however, is that air fryers are small and can likely
01:29only reheat one slice of pizza at a time.
01:33Considering that pizza is baked in an oven in the first place, the most obvious way to
01:36reheat it is to pop it right back in there. An oven is also one of the few appliances
01:40that can actually fit an entire pizza inside if you need to reheat a ton of it in one go.
01:46Mamma mia!
01:47You should place a baking tray into your oven and preheat it to 500 degrees Fahrenheit,
01:51or 450 if you don't like your pizza too crispy. Once the oven is hot, place the cold pizza
01:56slices onto the baking tray and heat it on the middle rack for five minutes. The result
02:00should be the perfect balance of crispy crust and soft cheese. Once you've used this method
02:05a few times, you can experiment with the temperature and cook time based on your desired crust
02:09texture.
02:10Insider reports that the oven works better than other methods, such as the microwave,
02:14because an oven allows the pizza to heat up gradually, as opposed to being suddenly blasted
02:18by hot air. The oven helps soften the starch that's present in the dough, making the pizza
02:22nice and moist on the inside, too.
02:25Reheating cold pizza in a preheated oven is a no-brainer, but you can also place the pizza
02:30in a cold oven and let it heat up as the oven does. According to Cook's Illustrated, the
02:34downside of reheating leftover pizza in a preheated oven is that the high temperature
02:38can dry out the dough. When bread items, like pizza, are stored away for later use, they
02:43go through a process known as retrogradation. The starch present in the dough crystallizes
02:47and soaks up all the moisture from the cheese and pizza sauce, and these crystals won't
02:51break down until they reach a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This is why cold
02:56pizza is often tough, dry, and hard to bite into.
02:59It's almost pizza. Pizza that's practically pizza in every way, except for a few key ones.
03:04But when you place leftover pizza in a cold oven, it heats up gradually, allowing moisture
03:08to break down in the dough so your pizza becomes soft yet crisp. The site recommends placing
03:13the cold pizza in a baking tray covered with aluminum foil. Doing so will allow the moisture
03:18to get trapped within the pizza and prevent it from drying up. You should also place the
03:22tray on the lowest possible rack in the oven so enough heat is directed to the bottom of
03:25the crust to make it crispy without burning the toppings.
03:29If you already have a grill fired up, you're in luck. You can reheat cold pizza there,
03:34too. Per art of manliness, you can throw pizza directly onto a hot grate without any oil,
03:38butter, or grease. This method may only be good, however, if you already have the grill
03:42fired up or are planning to use it for more than just reheating pizza. Otherwise, it may
03:47not be worth the hassle of going through the entire warming process.
03:50The Kitchen found that while the grill gave the pizza crust a lovely crunch, it was a
03:54disappointment when it came down to heating the cheese, which wasn't very bubbly in their
03:58test. Plus, the direct fire heat from a grill isn't even, which can make it difficult to
04:03control the reheating process. If your favorite thing about pizza is the gooey cheese rather
04:07than the crispy crust, this may not be the best method for you.
04:11Despite the fair warnings against using a microwave to reheat pizza, there's no denying
04:14that it is by far the quickest and most convenient method. If you have no option but to use a
04:19microwave, there is a way to lessen the damage while doing so. Place a mug of water next
04:24to the plate of pizza in the microwave to help the pizza heat more evenly. The idea
04:28is that the water absorbs some of the heat, so the cheese can warm up without fully dehydrating
04:33the crust in the process. Popular Science says this trick still doesn't result in the
04:37best reheated pizza, but it's a step up from microwaving without any water, so that's something.