The apparently insoluble problem for the home pizzaiolo cursed with a domestic oven is that of temperature: 500-550 degrees F. is all he’s going to get, while just down the street–and street, every street–is a pizzeria or even a slice joint whose ovens can do 800.
Actually, an ordinary household oven can do far more–it can hit up 900F if it has a self-cleaning cycle. That’s when you might be able to bake your pizza. I say ‘might’ because ‘might not’ also applies.
That’s because many ovens will lock the door on the self-cleaning cycle, which can last up to 3 hours. When that’s the case, it will be wise to learn exactly when the door locks–soon as you hit the self-clean button? When maximum temp is reached? After all, cooking a pizza takes less than two minutes at the outside. Will turning self-cleaning off unlock the door?
Otherwise there may be no use at all for yourself-cleaning feature. Manufacturers blithely celebrate it as the greatest thing since the slotted spoon, but some fire departments and experienced repairmen discourage its use, saying it can cause fires or at the very least, ruin ovens.
Much cautious experimentation will be required, but not by me: my oven predates the Self-Cleaning Era.
900F oven at pizzerias is only necessary if you go for Neapolitan (or closely related) style pizza. Other pizza styles, e.g. NY-style etc, don’t require these temperatures even in a commercial setting.
If you would use your self cleaning cycle quite regularly you most likely will shorten (significantly) the overall life cycle of your oven
Exactly. While I don’t make my own pizza dough, I preheat at 450° for an hour, slide the pizza created on parchment paper onto the hot stone, and it’s done in 10-12 minutes.
The vast of majority of slice shops in nyc bake btw 500-550f. With the right dough and equipment (stone or steel), you can make great pizza in your home oven.
People have cut the safety cord that prevents one from opening ovens in self cleaning mode, try googling “exploding oven pizza self clean”
I’ll just me too here. Unless you’re after Neopolitan specifically, you can almost certainly make a decent pie with a decent home oven and a stone or steel.
I’ve made Chicago thin crust as well as a new-York-ish style with my home electric oven (tops out at 550) and some unglazed tiles as a pizza stone. Quite happy with the results. I was contemplating putting an Ooni or Roccbox or the like, but I don’t want Neopolitan RHAT often, and there’s guys in town that REALLY do it right, so I’ll leave it to them.
Personally, I think I make the best deep dish in town, and I only need 450 for that.
I used instructions here on HO to order a custom steel for my oven. It’s worked better than I could’ve ever imagined. You can also buy factory seconds on Amazon for a discounted price: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CF7583TP
I think when you bypass the self cleaning lock, you’re at a higher risk of shattering your oven glass because the glass isnt manufactured for such a sudden change
in temperature. Regardless, it’s very scary when it happens. Get a tabletop pizza oven if you really want high heat pizza indoors. ATK has a recommendation on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LSq8kIcxUXQ
When i was cooking pizzas in the oven , before i purchase my outdoor pizza oven . I would pre heat the baking stone as high as the oven would go . 550 degrees for a hour . Then turn on the broiler on high for a half hour .
Launch the pizza onto the stone . Immediately turn off the broiler . Pizza on upper third of the oven .
Cooks super quick. Keep a eye on it . Turn the pizza as needed.
You would have to hack the lock feature. And even then, you would probably get one temperature–900F. So you’d be wise to also pimp out a thermostat.
I have a 1/2" steel. It solves the bottom crust issue. But it doesn’t address having toppings finish in balance with the bottom. IME, the broiler isn’t much help for anything other than coaxing the steel past the 500F max.
Frankly, for the home oven, I wish I’d gone with a 1/4" steel and contented myself with 6-8 minute pies, i.e., realized the futility of trying for 3-4 minute cooks.
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
12
Hey Bill. I discussed defeating my oven’s lock here at HO for this purpose (and my impression is that most (all?) ovens with an 800-900°F self-clean feature have locks).
Mine locks as soon as you hit the self-clean cycle and doesn’t unlock for about 3.5 to 4.5 hours (has a shorter and a longer cycle).
Supposedly it gets to 900°F during the cycle. Anyway, the consensus here was that the running the self-clean cycle more frequently would hasten the brain board’s demise.
My main reason for running the cleaning cycle as often as I did (several times a year) was because it was the only good way to get oils out of my pizza stones. Then someone told me to switch to using parchment under the pizza and I don’t need to run it as much. Only if I’ve slopped some grease out of a sheet pan or some such (the stones live in the oven all the time, regardless of whether pizza is on the menu).
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
13
Hadn’t even considered this! Glass heated to 900°F suddenly exposed to kitchen air at 72F. It can take ~580F to 72F well enough, but nearly doubling that gap could be a big deal. Thanks.
ETA
I think I saw you mention this problem in another thread and I’m not sure what’s going on. Do you have super thick pizzas? Mine seem to get done (top/bottom) together. I’d like to get a steel, but for now am using stones. These pizzas below were done in 3 and 4 minutes, respectively (the one that started on top got done first, then the one that had been under that needed a minute on top). The dough is supposed to be Neapolitan style (Charlie chain baker’s recipe).
Get yourself a DARK METAL pan. A light aluminum cake pan will give you pale, anemic crusts.
corn oil will get you that “hey, is there corn meal in this?” flavor, but it perfectly ok to sub in some percentage of actual cornmeal if you like it. The traditional big places (Lou’s, Pequod’s, Gino’s, etc) don’t. But some others do. Little Star is a California deep-dish chain that explicitly uses corn meal in the crust and it’s delicious.
Use FULL FAT mozz. A little NON-SMOKED provolone is good to mix in to maximize cheese stretch.
No, normal thickness. I think I overdid with the steel thickness–it imparts too much heat relative to what’s happening up top. I was considering getting a slab of copper instead of steel, but now I think that would be even more out-of-balance.
It looks like a stone works for you in your oven and for the styles you like. What do you think a steel might improve?
4 min bakes . . . worth it . . .
they are not.
there is imho a valid argument for the super thin crust styles. the crust cooks so fast you need millions of degrees to get the ‘top’ to become anything past lukewarm before the crust is black…
we prefer a thicker crust, so a stone preheated to 500, then a 425-450’F bake cycle, yields a done/crispy crust and hot bubbly toppings. that’s how it works in my kitchen, and I’m sticking to it . . .
1 Like
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
19
I see - that’s why you said the 1/4 inch would have been better - should have figured it out from the context.
Mainly washability - I still sometimes slop oil on the stones and as mentioned in another comment, the only good way I know of to get oil out of my (porous) stones is to burn it out (I did try washing with Dawn once and it took several hours dry baking to get the “Dawn-y” smell out).
The other aspect is that I don’t care if I have perfectly circular pizza and often go with more of a rectangle, and 16x24 inch rectangular steels would have about 1.9x the surface area of my 16 inch circular stones. Although someone probably makes a 16x24 rectangular stone, too - but I’d still strongly prefer something I can just wash with soapy water.
For some styles of pizza, bake time is the most important ingredient. As a pizza bakes, heat both causes the water in the dough to boil, creating rapidly expanding steam, and heat expands the gas already present in the dough that was previously formed during fermentation. The greater amount of heat that can be applied, the faster the steam/gas expands, the greater the oven spring, the puffier the texture.
Steel’s superior conductivity to traditional ceramic materials allows it to transfer heat at a faster rate for a quicker bottom bake. At typical home oven temps, ceramic materials can’t bake pizzas much faster than around 8 minutes. With thick enough steel plate, at those same temps, the bake time can be cut to as little as 3 minutes- with dramatically superior results.
