Dave Hale, known by many online as @DavesPizzaOven, holds up a slice of a cheese pizza while filming at his home kitchen in East Dallas. During the week, Hale sells eye equipment to optometrists. On weekends, he makes pizzas for a fanbase of well over 1 million followers on social media.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
On weekends, Dave Hale obsessively bakes cheese pizzas from his East Dallas kitchen. He slaps a bubbling pie on his cutting board, rips a pizza slicer through crispy crust and presents a triangular slice to his iPhone camera. Thousands watch online, probably drooling, as Hale eats and analyzes his pizza, then offers tips on how to make it at home.
Don’t call him an influencer, despite the 675,000 followers he’s amassed on @DavesPizzaOven on Instagram and another 300,000 on TikTok. He has about 300,000 more followers on YouTube and Facebook, combined.
Article continues below this ad
A self-taught baker from St. Louis, 36-year-old Hale considers pizzamaking a hobby.
He’s “just a normal guy making pizza at home,” as his social media bio reads. It’s not an annoying undersell; about 500,000 or more of those followers joined him in the past year, after he posted a seven-day pizza tutorial that catapulted him into the online pizzaverse.
He gives credit to his wife — “not even the biggest pizza lover,” he admitted — who came up with the idea to make pizzas from scratch during date night in 2022.
Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.
Add Preferred Source
She “probably regretted it,” he said.
Article continues below this ad
“I started making almost the same exact pizza every single night, with minor adjustments.” He was on a quest to find the perfect cheese pizza recipe.
Dave Hale records Instagram videos on his iPhone while he makes pizzas at home. He’s a one-man show.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
Hale’s videos are informative and casual, the type that’ll inspire a bored doomscroller to get off the couch and make dough on date night. @DavesPizzaOven’s quick rise to fame has earned him a collaboration with Alex Snodgrass, the Dallas-area creator of The Defined Dish cookbooks. He just finished a pizzamaking demo at Pizza Fest at Eataly in Dallas on April 19, 2026.
“You’ll never hear me talk about myself as the expert,” Hale said. His day job is selling eye equipment to Dallas optometrists and ophthalmologists.
Article continues below this ad
As Hale continues baking crispy pies from his Lakewood-area home, we ask why he loves pizza, how he garnered so much social media attention and if he’s a secret millionaire.
How did you get interested in pizza?
“A pizza obsession has been with me through my whole life,” Hale said, “and I mean the love of pizza, not the science behind it.”
His first time baking from scratch — ever — was in 2022.
Article continues below this ad
He started by sharing pizza pics on his personal Instagram page. “I just thought it was cool: Who doesn’t love pizza? A friend or two encouraged me to make my own page.” He laughed: “I was kind of clogging up my own page with this. I mean, maybe everybody doesn’t care about my pizza.”
The Instagram page started with “zero intention.” “It was just to share my creations … and I loved the editing process. I think I only had 2,000 followers for two straight years.”
Dave Hale tosses pizza dough at his home kitchen in Dallas before making a pizza for Instagram on @DavesPizzaOven.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
How did you go from 2,000 followers to 650,000 on Instagram alone?
“I wish I had an answer for you. I have impostor syndrome. It’s really hard to comprehend. I think it’s because I started to get pretty good at the tutorial side of things,” he said.
Article continues below this ad
He felt “embarrassed” to show his face in videos, so he didn’t do that for about three years. But then he did a seven-day pizza tutorial — one video a day, for a week, offering tips like what kitchen gear to buy, best practices to make dough and how to dial in your oven to get crispy crust at home.
“I think that’s what really made it explode. … I can’t pretend to explain how the algorithm works, but that series got people interested in pizzamaking. And it got people believing they can actually do it.”
Dave Hale sprinkles cheese on his pizza during an Instagram video for @DavesPizzaOven.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
Are you a secret millionaire?
Article continues below this ad
“I am making some money from it, and it’s starting to snowball. Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, they all have ad dollars they contribute around your videos,” he said. “I do have a subscription website for people. It’s all the same recipes I have on my pages, but it’s for people who want something more organized. … More step by step. And more searchable.”
“It’s life-changing in the sense that I never thought I’d generate a single dollar on my passion.”
He paused. “It’s not quit-my-job money.”
“When you’re baking, you spend a lot of time looking at the oven,” said Dallas baker Dave Hale, of @DavesPizzaOven on Instagram.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
You say you’re not an influencer. Why?
“I have a gripe with the term ‘influencer.’ I am a content creator, and there’s a difference. I am focused on creating. And educating and tutorials. I’m more making a product and offering a service.
Article continues below this ad
“I think influencing is more about yourself, or more about your daily life. Or selling other products directly for other companies.”
Your Instagram handle is @DavesPizzaOven. The oven is actually a KitchenAid in your house, right?
Yes. (And no, the oven was not free.)
The name @DavesPizzaOven isn’t about the oven, however. “I wish I had a better story for you on that name,” he said. “I came up with something generic. Instead of Dave’s Pizza, I called it Dave’s Pizza Oven.”
Dave Hale drizzles olive oil on the crust of a cheese pizza at his home kitchen in East Dallas. He said it’s one of the little secrets he does to make the pizza taste better.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
Is that part of the allure, that you’re using a ‘regular’ oven?
“I think that’s really what people resonate with. It’s achievable for everybody.”
Article continues below this ad
He also has three outdoor pizza ovens and enjoys using them now and then. But his preferred styles, New York and pan pizza, he makes in his home oven.
Where do you shop?
Hale gets most of his ingredients from Jimmy’s Food Store in Old East Dallas.
“They use the ingredients that 80% of the New York shops use,” he said. Go-to grocery items include Bianco Dinapoli crushed tomatoes and Grande mozzarella cheese.
Article continues below this ad
Other than cheese, Dave Hale’s favorite pizza combo is pepperoni, burrata, basil and hot honey.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
We’re here for the geeky details, so describe your crust.
“My go-to dough recipe is a three-day process.” (Get out your pen and paper!) “I let it slow ferment for two-three days. During that time, the gluten is getting stronger, the flavor is developing, the bread itself is getting more digestible.”
He bakes it for 8 minutes at 550 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, he usually puts olive oil around the freshly baked crust. “One, I think it looks awesome. But two, it tastes good.”
Article continues below this ad
He describes the crust as “light, crunchy and airy, with a little char. We call it a deep bake. So the crust isn’t pale, it’s on the darker side.”
Dave Hale always wears an apron with pizzas all over it when he bakes pizzas for his Instagram page, @DavesPizzaOven.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
You’re known for cheese pizza. What’s up with cheese?
“Cheese is the blankest canvas. You can hide a bad pizza with toppings,” he said.
Article continues below this ad
He added, “it’s more complex than you think, to find the perfect balance of cheese, sauce and bread.”
He hatches an idea: “I was thinking of doing a series of all the ways you could make a cheese pizza. Using sliced cheese [and] shredded cheese. The way it melts, the way it protects the tomato layer: It comes out completely different.”
“I have so much respect for pizza shop owners. I don’t know how they could ever decide one way to do this.”
Speaking of, would you ever open a restaurant?
“I respect these guys so much. I don’t know. I think it would be really fun, in the sense that I get to share my creation with everybody. But I know how hard they work.”
Article continues below this ad
He reconsidered. “Never say never.”
How’s it cookin’? Dave Hale of @DavesPizzaOven gives the camera a thumbs up while filming an Instagram video at his home kitchen in East Dallas.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
If you weren’t making pizzas, what might you be doing?
By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy.
“I like dabbling with the experimental side of things,” he said. Hale was a biology major at the University of Missouri.
Article continues below this ad
At one point he wanted to be a dentist, but he worried he wasn’t as smart as some of the other medical students. “I always had an interest in the science side of things. … When I learned there were all these different variables [with pizza], my mind was drawn to it,” he said.
“I wish I could be interested in more healthy food, honestly. But pizza was my calling.”