What is pinsa?

Pinsa usually arrives as an elongated, airy base with a crisp underside and large bubbles around the rim. A ready-made base puts dinner within easy reach. If you are making the dough yourself, allow plenty of time for it to rise.

Pinsa is a modern Roman pizza style developed by Corrado Di Marco in 2001. His version became known for its blend of wheat, rice and soy flour, long fermentation and oval shape. The original flour proportions are a secret, and other bakers use their own blends.

How is pinsa different from pizza?

It depends on the pizza. Neapolitan pizza is round and baked quickly at a very high temperature. Pinsa is usually oval, with a wetter dough that often spends a day or more in the fridge. Di Marco specifies about 80 per cent water relative to the flour weight. That can take some practice to handle if you are used to a firmer pizza dough.

Pinsa is closer to Roman pizza alla pala, which is also elongated. The Roman pizza association describes pinsa as a small, plate-sized pala made with roughly the same kind of dough. How well it rises, how gently it is shaped and how it is baked all affect the airiness. The flour blend only does part of the work.

If you have bought a ready-made base

Follow the time and temperature on the packet. A par-baked base behaves differently from raw dough, and the maker's instructions are written for the base you have. Check the ingredients if you need to account for allergies; wheat and soy may both be present.

Keep the toppings fairly thin so the base has a chance to crisp up. Drain fresh mozzarella and go easy on the tomato. An extra spoonful can be tempting, but that moisture needs time to evaporate in the oven.

The dough in our pinsa recipe

In Zimmer's pinsa recipe, the flour is 80 per cent wheat, 10 per cent rice and 10 per cent soy. These are the proportions for our recipe, not Di Marco's secret original blend.

The dough uses a small amount of yeast and rises in the fridge before being shaped gently and par-baked. The tomato and mozzarella go on afterwards. Par-baking helps the wet dough form a firm underside in a home oven. If you have a baking stone or steel, give it enough time to heat through before you start baking.

Where does the ancient Roman story come from?

You may have seen pinsa described as a flatbread from ancient Rome. Di Marco's company explains that this story was created to promote the new product. Romans ate flatbreads, but modern pinsa was developed in 2001.

The name was linked to the Latin pinsere, though its derivation is less settled than some accounts suggest. The Italian dictionary Treccani lists the etymology as uncertain.

Is pinsa easier to digest?

The claim often appears in marketing, but we have not found a human study showing that pinsa is generally easier to digest than pizza. An airy crust may feel light to eat; that is different from evidence about digestion.

A 2023 laboratory study compared six pinsa doughs in a model of digestion. There were no human participants and no ordinary pizza as a control. The results tell us about the doughs that were tested, but cannot establish that pinsa is easier for people to digest.