• Preheat oven with baking steel at 500°F for 1 hour prior to baking. Remove pizza dough from fridge (if refrigerated) and allow to come to room temperature at least 60-90 minutes prior to stretching.

Homemade Hot Honey

• In a small, 1 quart sauce pot crack dried arbol chiles in half to release the seeds. Toast pods and seeds until lightly fragrant over low-medium heat for about 60-90 seconds, stirring frequently to prevent burning.
• Add the honey (and ground cayenne, optional) and cook, swirling occasionally until the honey is just starting to bubble around the edges. Remove from heat immediately and let sit for 10 minutes.
• Pour the honey through a wire mesh strainer into a glass jar or container and let cool to room temperature before use.

Prep Hot Honey Pizza Toppings

• Make the pizza sauce. Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of a mini food processor and blitz on high speed until well combined.
• Slice the peppers. Thinly slice the Fresno pepper into rounds. For less heat, remove the seeds and ribs before slicing.
• Grate the cheese. Use the large holes of a box grater to grate the mozzarella cheese.
• Thinly slice fresh basil. Stack a few basil leaves on top of each other and roll them into a log. Slice thin and unfurl for thin ribbons. NOTE: Wait to do this while the pizza is in the oven. But you may want to get the basil out now so you don't forget about it!

Hot Honey Pizza Assembly

• Lightly dust a wooden pizza peel with semolina flour.
• Hand stretch pizza dough. Stretch the pizza dough into a round about 10-16" in size, depending on how thick you want it or the size of your dough ball. (See: How to Hand Stretch Pizza Dough.)
• Sauce it. Use the back of a metal spoon to spread the pizza sauce almost all the way to the crust. You don't need as much sauce as you think — start with two spoonfuls, and add more only as needed.
• Cheese and toppings. Add the mozzarella cheese, top with pepperoni, Fresno peppers, and goat cheese crumbles. Finish with a dusting of finely grated pecorino romano cheese.
Don't go overboard with the goat cheese — even with the crumbles, too much goat cheese can turn the top of your pizza into a soup!

Hot Honey Pizza Baking

• Shimmy. Give the hot honey pizza a shimmy on the wooden pizza peel to make sure that no parts of the crust have stuck. Dust additional flour underneath any stuck spots if needed.
• Launch. Open the oven and line up the tip of the pizza peel with the back of the steel. Tilt it at an angle (20° or so) and give it a quick thrust to help the pizza begin sliding off. As the pizza slides, pull the peel straight back, keeping the tip of the peel on the steel, depositing the pizza on to the hot surface to begin cooking.
• Bake. Bake the pizza for 2-3 minutes, then use the pizza peel to rotate it in place on the steel so it cooks evenly. Bake 2-3 minutes more, then broil for 1 minute or until as browned as you like. Remove from the oven.
Broilers are VERY hot and their power can vary widely from oven to oven. Once you switch to broiling, check on your pizza every 30 seconds to make sure it doesn't burn!
• Basil & Hot Honey Drizzle. Top immediately with fresh basil and a drizzle of the cooled homemade hot honey. Slice and serve with both hot honey and plain honey on the side to allow guests to further customize the heat and sweetness of their pizzas!