20-Minute Valentine's Day Heart-Shaped Pizza

If you need a last-minute Valentine's Day dinner recipe, this homemade heart-shaped no-rise, no-yeast pizza is delicious and quick to make. With its super crispy thin crust, ooey-gooey toppings, and melted mozzarella, it's a total heartbreaker, and it only takes 10 minutes to prep and just about 10 minutes to bake.  

What Is St. Louis Style Pizza?

By all accounts, most of the "authentic" St. Louis-style recipes online have evolved from Imo's, a mom-and-pop pizza joint in St. Louis with over 90 locations in and around the city.

A true St. Louis-style Pizza is made without yeast and has a crispy cracker-like crust topped with Provel cheese (the really melty processed cheese with a hint of smokiness to it).

It should be sauced and topped with ingredients from side to side without a visible crust perimeter, and it's always cut into squares instead of wedges for serving.

I skip the Provel cheese here and use fresh balls of mozzarella instead. Top your pizzas with shredded mozzarella, cheddar, or whatever other cheese you like. If you want to know more, check out my original St. Louis-Style Pizza Post.

Homemade St. Louis Style Heart-Shaped Pizza Ingredients

All you need to make St. Louis-style pizza is flour, salt, baking powder, olive oil, water, and golden syrup (or corn syrup). I use Lyle's Golden Syrup, but you can substitute it with light corn syrup, honey, or even maple syrup instead.

If you don't have any of these syrups, just omit this ingredient from the recipe altogether. Its purpose in the dough is to help with the browning of the crust and add moisture to the dough, giving it a tender, finer crumb. But again, it's not absolutely necessary.

This is a versatile pizza that can be made with just about any type of flour (I've used Italian 00 flour, all-purpose flour, bread flour, and even 100% whole wheat flour (see comparison photos below) and it always tastes great.

For the dough

• all-purpose flour (sub "00" flour)
• salt
• baking powder
• extra virgin olive oil
• Lyle's Golden Syrup (sub maple syrup, brown rice syrup, or light corn syrup) 
• water

For the sauce and toppings

• canned tomatoes (or your favorite pizza sauce)
• fresh mozzarella balls (or your favorite shredded cheese)
• sliced veggies and/or any meat toppings, to taste
• dried or fresh oregano (or another Italian herb blend)
• grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Parmesan cheese
• salt

Three St. Louis-Style Pizza Doughs Made From Different Types of Flour

(All-Purpose, Italian 00-Flour, and 100% Whole Wheat Flour)

All-purpose and bread flour both make a somewhat shaggy dough compared to the softer, smoother Italian 00 flour dough (seen in the middle row photos).

Even the very shaggy whole wheat dough creates an excellent pizza crust with a little extra flavor. Fyi, Luca's favorite is the regular all-purpose dough, and mine is the whole wheat.

How to Make St. Louis Style Heart-Shaped Pizza Step-by-Step 

For this recipe, I prefer to cook the pizza on a preheated baking pan (or stone) for extra crispiness, and I provide those instructions (including photos of the process) below.  However, it's not mandatory to preheat your baking pan to get a decent pizza using this dough.

Here's an overview of how to make this pizza, but you can find detailed instructions in the recipe card below. 

1. Preheat the oven and baking pan. *If you're not using the preheated-pan method, lightly oil a baking pan and leave it on the counter while you prepare the dough.
2. Mix the dry ingredients and whisk to combine.
3. Add the wet ingredients, stir everything to form a round dough ball, and divide the dough in half to create 2 dough rounds.
4. Roll out the dough and cut it into a heart shape. 
5. Add a little oil to a piece of parchment paper, place it on top of the rolled-out pizza dough, and flip it over. 
6. Top the pizza with sauce and toppings of choice.
7. Bake the pizza and enjoy!

Heart-Shaped Pizza Step-By-Step Recipe Photos

How to Safely Get a Pizza Into the Oven & Onto a Pre-heating Baking Pan/Stone without a pizza peel

In the photos below, you can see I've used the shallow grill pan (that came with my oven) as my pizza baking pan. I allow the pan to preheat on the oven "floor" where I get the most heat. 

And by using an oiled piece of parchment paper under the raw rolled-out dough, I'm able to add sauce and toppings to this super-thin, no-rise dough and still be able to easily transport it to the hot oven (using a cutting board underneath for support).

Working quickly, I open the oven door and gently slide the piece of parchment paper with the pizza on it, right onto the hot baking pan. After about 10 minutes, you have a super delicious pizza to eat. Read more tips below.

How to Bake a Heart-Shaped Pizza on a Preheated Baking Pan (for Extra Crispiness)

If you don't have a pizza stone or pizza peel (or if you only have a small stovetop oven), there are a couple of techniques you can use to ensure a crispy pizza crust.

In the absence of a pizza stone (which uses refractory heat to cook), it's important to ensure the surface that your pizza will bake on (i.e., a cookie sheet, etc.) gets really hot before you add the pizza to it. This helps the crust to start cooking on the bottom immediately.

Preheat the cookie or baking sheet that you'll be cooking your pizza on.

Preheating the baking sheet helps ensure the bottom of the pizza crust starts cooking as soon as it hits the hot baking pan.

My oven heats from both the bottom and top, so I like to keep the grill pan (that came with the oven), at the very bottom of the oven (on the oven "floor"). It gets really hot and works beautifully for this pizza.

However, if your oven heats only from the top, I'd recommend placing the baking tray in the top ⅓ of the oven to preheat the pan and cook the pizza (because heat rises). Play around with the location to see where you get the best baking results.

Place a layer of parchment paper on top of rolled-out lightly oiled pizza dough.

Roll the pizza dough out onto a non-stick baking mat if you have one (or use parchment paper). After you've rolled it out to about ⅛ inch thick, drizzle the dough very lightly with just enough extra virgin olive oil to create a thin layer (see photos below).

Use your hand (or a pastry brush) to smear the oil over the entire top of the dough. This oiled side of the dough will actually end up being the bottom of your pizza and will have near-direct contact with the hot baking pan once it goes into the oven to bake.

This small addition of olive oil helps the crust crisp up even more. Place parchment paper over the top of the oiled dough and press gently to adhere. The olive oil acts like "glue" and keeps the parchment paper in place.

Make sure the size of parchment paper you use is slightly larger than the entire dough itself (even if you have to use two sheets to get full coverage). The goal is to have enough excess parchment around the edges so you can use it to pull and slide the assembled pizza into the oven to bake.

Place one or two flimsy cutting boards (or plastic placemats) on top of the parchment-covered dough and flip it over.

Place flimsy cutting boards (or any large item with a flat surface) on top of the parchment paper/dough to provide support when you flip it over.

Flip everything over including the non-stick baking mat. Now the oiled dough is resting on top of the parchment paper and you can peel off the non-stick mat leaving the pizza dough intact and ready to be topped.

Slide the flimsy cutting boards underneath the parchment paper with rolled out dough to provide support for your pizza before you top it.

Sliding cutting boards (or any flat surface larger than your pizza) under the parchment paper allows you to top your pizza and then safely and easily transport it from the countertop to the hot baking sheet.

I prefer to use the two flimsy plastic cutting boards (see photos) because they're thin enough to effortlessly slide under the parchment paper, and they also provide just enough support so I can hold the topped pizza securely with one hand while I'm opening the oven door with the other hand.

Then I get as close to the hot baking sheet as possible and pull the parchment paper (with the pizza on it) off of the cutting boards, and directly onto the hot baking pan. This is a really simple way to get a super crispy crust on the pizza in a home oven without needing a baking stone or a pizza peel.

NOTE: If you don't want to use the techniques above for a super-crispy crust, skip them. Simply roll out the dough, add it to a lightly oiled (room temperature) baking pan, then add sauce, toppings, and bake as directed or a few minutes longer to achieve a crispy crust.

Perfect Pizza Side Dishes and Desserts

Depending on how hungry you are (or how many people you're serving), here are a few tasty recipes that make any pizza night even better.