By Boniface Muriuki. Last updated on 1st March, 2025
If you love pizza, then you understand the pain of throwing away leftover pizza. However, it is an open secret that pizza will not taste as good as when it was hot!
If you’ve found yourself in such frustrations, then this article is for you! We’ve offered a comprehensive guide on how to reheat pizza without losing its original taste.
You’ll never again worry about the risk of food poisoning and bacterial infections when munching your leftover pizza. Read on to get unmatched pizza heating tips.
Is It Safe to Reheat Pizza?
Yes, it is safe to reheat your pizza. However, you should be careful to store it in a refrigerator. If you forget to refrigerate it overnight, then you should never reheat it.
Additionally, when refrigerating, you should ensure that you do so in a highly hygienic environment to prevent cross-contamination. Also, ensure that you achieve more than 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
Important Points on Reheating Pizza
If you’re wondering how to reheat pizza, then you can be certain that there are myriad ways you can use to achieve it.
However, you should always keep the following in mind for guaranteed safety:
- Ensure that your leftover pizza gets to 165 degrees Fahrenheit
- Only reheat your pizza once. If you fail to finish the second time, you should just throw it away
- Never reheat a pizza that has stayed unrefrigerated (at room temperature) overnight
Reheating your pizza to more than 165 degrees Fahrenheit ensures that you eliminate all disease-causing pathogens.
While refrigerating the pizza minimizes the chance of pathogen growth, it is always an excellent idea to take precautionary measures by reheating it.
Should I Store Pizza in a Refrigerator?
How to store leftover pizza? This is a question that bothers many pizza lovers. If you’re unable to finish off your pie, you can always store it to eat the following day.
However, how you store your leftover pizza matters a lot. We recommend that you store it in a refrigerator. If you properly do it, you can be sure that it will retain its freshness for 2-3 days.
If you want prolonged preservation, you can store the pizza in a freezer. Using this technique, your leftover pizza can remain palatable for months. However, we do not recommend this storage method.
How to Store your Leftover Pizza
While we have learned that it is fine to store your leftover pizzas in a fridge, how you store them is crucial.
Shoving your pizza in a fridge while still enclosed in its box is always a terrible idea. The excessive air circulation will harden the pizza, thus making it lose its original taste.
To ensure that your pizza maintains its excellent texture and taste, you should stack the pieces and wrap them using a foil, sheet of wax, or parchment paper.
Every time you stack a piece of pizza, you should foil in an alternating fashion. Once you’re through, you can wrap it with plastic wrap and place it in your refrigerator.
How Long is Leftover Safe for Consumption?
This will depend on how well you store your leftover pizza. Ideally, a pizza that has stayed overnight on your kitchen counter is not safe for eating.
However, if you refrigerate it well, you can reheat the pizza even after 4 days. If the leftover pizza has been refrigerated for more than 4 days, you should consider discarding it.
Alternatively, you can freeze your pizza if you’re sure that you’ll not finish it within the 4 days. A pizza left in the freezer can go for up to 2 months and still remain safe for reheating and eating.
How to Reheat Pizza – A Comprehensive Guide
While reheating pizza is a straightforward exercise, you should be cautious to achieve more than 165 degrees Fahrenheit to avoid food poisoning.
Here are the top 3 methods that will exhaustively answer your “how to reheat pizza” question?
1. How to Reheat Pizza in an Oven
An oven offers one of the most reliable techniques for reheating your pizza. However, you must be careful to follow the following steps to the letter lest you get a dried crust:
- Preheat Your Oven to 375 Degrees Fahrenheit
This is one of the most critical steps. A miss here will result in relatively dried up pizza which will not be fun to eat.
Ensure that your oven heats to 375 F to achieve the original pepperoni and gooey cheese taste.
- Line a Baking Tray with Paper Foil
You must always ensure that your tray is hot before you place your pizza. To achieve this, you can line it with a foil and slide it into your oven. Let it sit for a few minutes before allowing your pizza to touch it.
Alternatively, you can wrap your leftover pizza in a foil and place it directly on the rack. This will achieve uniform heating, thus ensuring that even the deepest part of your pizza reheats well.
- Start the Reheating Process
Once your tray heats, you can place your pizza on top. Push the tray back into the oven and let it reheat for approximately 10 minutes.
Downside
While this method is efficient, it takes some time to reheat the pizza entirely. Additionally, it may be uneconomical to heat the oven when warming a single piece of pizza.
2. How to Reheat Pizza in the Stovetop
This method entails reheating pizza in a skillet. When compared to an oven, using this technique is quicker. Here is a step-by-step guide:
- Place Your Skillet On the Stovetop
We recommend that you use a nonstick skillet to ensure that your pizza does not stick on the surface.
Immediately after placing the skillet on fire, you should place your pieces of pizza directly.
- Add a Few Drops of Water
As you continue heating, you can add a few drops of water on the side. Ensure that you do not pour the water directly on top of your pizza.
- Cover the Skillet and Let the Pizza Reheat
After adding the water, you should cover the skillet and let it reheat. The water will form steam that will melt the cheese, warm the crust, and give you a crispy texture.
Downside
Achieving the required 165 degrees Fahrenheit is not possible. As such, you should only do this if you enjoy a relatively warm pizza.
Learn more about saute pans and how to use them here
3. How to Reheat Pizza in a Microwave
This is the least recommended “how to reheat pizza” technique. While microwave has been used traditionally for reheating purposes, it yields undesirable results when reheating pizza.
Microwaving the pizza makes the pizza lose its crunchy top as the flour, protein, and starch that makes it melt away. While it will be initially soft, it will start to become excessively hard as it cools!
However, you can always use this technique if you intend to eat the pizza instantly and won’t mind soft toppings.
Here are the steps to follow when microwaving your pizza:
- Place your pizza on a clean plate
- Set your microwave to 35% power
- Heat the pizza for approximately 1 minute
Only use this method when you have no access to an oven (or even a toaster oven) and stovetop.
Other options that you can explore include:
4. How to Reheat Pizza in an Air Fryer
- Preheat your air fryer to approximately 325 F
- Place your pizza leftovers in an air fryer basket
- Let the pizza reheat for 3-4 minutes. If warmed, then remove it and serve
5. How to Reheat Pizza in a Grill
This is one of the most labor-intensive technique you can use to reheat your pizza. However, it yields crunchy pizza top, making the wait worth it. Here are steps you should follow:
- Set your grill to medium/high and let it heat for some minutes
- Place your leftover pizza pieces on the grate
- Let the pizza warm for 6-10 minutes
- Check whether the crust is crispy. If satisfied, remove it from the grill and serve
While this method is yields impressive results, it has its downsides. First, it requires a lot of energy to start your best gas and charcoal grill combo (if you have an electric grill, the you’ll be lucky!).
Also, using this technique may be limited by weather, especially if you’re into outdoor grilling activities.
Overall Recommendation
After trying all the methods, we highly recommend the use of an oven. It yields an amazingly crunchy crust and tasty pizza.
While the method may heat your house a bit, you can be sure that you’re enjoy the final results!
How to Reheat Pizza – The Bottom Line
Wondering how to reheat pizza? Well, we understand the frustrations associated with throwing away your favorite leftover pie.
As such, we’ve compiled a list of the best methods that you can use to reheat it. Ensure that you follow the process to the letter if you desire to restore its original taste. Most importantly, always ensure that you reheat the leftover pizza to 165 degree Fahrenheit.
To answer the question “how to reheat pizza”, we favor the “how to reheat pizza with an oven” option. An oven offers a crunchy and enjoyable well-heated pizza for your enjoyment!
