Italian Pizza vs. American Pizza

• Unlike American pizza's thick crusts, heavy tomato sauce and multiple toppings, traditional Italian pizza is simple: Thin dough, topped with olive oil, salt, pepper and aromatic herbs. Olive oil is a terrific carrier of other flavors, like garlic or herbs, and flavored olive oils can be used to enhance the flavor of pizza without adding weighty toppings.

  Brushing traditional Italian pizza with oil works because the other flavors are also simple and subtle. But brushing an American pizza with oil does little to improve the flavor because the tangy tomato sauce, spicy pepperoni and bold cheese flavors overpower the delicate olive oil.

Brushing Before Proofing

• To make a pizza dough that can be stretched, you have to allow the dough to rise. To do this, you usually need to leave it somewhere warm, and cover it with plastic wrap or a damp towel. This process is called proofing. If the outer layer of dough is allowed to dry out, it forms a crust which prevents the dough from expanding and rising. Brushing the dough with oil before proofing helps to prevent a crust from forming and allows the dough to rise fully. It'll Be Pizza, a commercial pizza dough manufacturer in Scarborough, Maine, says dough "must be brushed with oil when doing this [proofing] to prevent crusting."

Brushing Before Baking

• American culinary schools don't teach trainee chefs to brush their pizza with olive oil before baking. In his cookbook, "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," bestselling author Mark Bittman advises you to "drizzle the rounds [of dough] with the olive oil, then top them with the sauce and cheese." Many cookbooks and websites recommend brushing the rim of the crust with oil to add flavor, make the crust crunchy, or soft, help the edge to brown or to prevent it from burning. There seem to be as many reasons to brush your pizza crust as there are recipes.

The Science of Pizza Crust

• Two other aspects affect the quality of your pizza dough: Whether the dough rises and increases in volume, and how stretchy the dough becomes. Follow your recipe's instructions for proofing the ensure the dough rises. To make sure your dough is elastic enough to stretch without breaking or shrinking, you must knead it or use the dough hook attachment on a stand mixer. Kneading times vary by recipe, but without kneading or mixing with a dough hook, your dough will not develop enough gluten to stretch to make satisfactory a pizza crust.

A Matter of Preference

• Whether you brush with oil or not depends on who taught you to make pizza, as well as your personal preferences. Flavored oils can really brighten your pizza dough, and experimenting with oils infused with garlic or rosemary can be fun. But watch out because if you're using toppings with strong flavors, you won't be able to taste the delicately flavored oil you put on your crust.