6 ms·

Folks who know pizza: What can those us with regular ovens do? You know, the sort of oven you find in most kitchens that top out at 250C (500F)?

markild 9y ago
I will not claim to honestly "know" pizza, but in my experience, turning your oven up to max with a baking steel (or stone), can give great results, without the need of anything that breaks the bank.
dsr_ 9y ago
1. Make great dough. The ingredients are cheap, it doesn't take much manual time -- but you want to let it ferment in your refrigerator at least overnight. 2. Make your own sauce. The ingredients are cheap, and a little experimentation will get it to the taste that you want. 3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little bits. 4. Transfer as much heat as possible to the bottom of your crust. You can use a baking steel, a pizza stone, or unglazed fire tiles available for less than $10 at your local hardware store. Put them in the oven exactly where you want your pizza to go, then fire it all the way up. 5. Experiment. The first few pizzas you make will vary wildly from "almost what I want" to "maybe I shouldn't make pizza". Keep going. Take notes. And if you don't have an oven at all, consider getting a cast iron frying pan and try for a completely different kind of pizza: http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/08/cast-iron-pizza-tortilla-video-recipe-food-lab.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/08/cast-iron-pizza-tortilla-...
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  I've been making my own pizza at home for around a decade now and your 5 points are very good advice. I think 5 is probably the most important. I have recently been on a calzone kick[0] and have been experimenting with different ratios of cheeses. [0] Not sure why I've never tried before. I guess because the pizza's been so good.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
    What kind of results are you guys getting? I tried for a while but then gave up. Just not hot enough. I actually found Jeff's recipe waaay back before he opened his restaurant, I remember him announcing it, and I was really upset when I got to the oven temperatures.
    - ashark 9y ago
      Better than anything but the fancy, expensive pizza joints around here. 550F max oven. Even bread machine dough pizza comes out pretty damn good. Hard to do worse than major chain pizza, certainly, unless you accidentally leave out crucial ingredients or have some similarly disastrous mishap.
    - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
      I've found that you can coax some extra heat from an uncooperative oven via a cast iron "cookie sheet" (flat side of a griddle). https://www.amazon.com/Lodge-LDP3-Reversible-9-5-inch-16-75-inch/dp/B002CMLTXG https://www.amazon.com/Lodge-LDP3-Reversible-9-5-inch-16-75-... (flat side) Preheat the oven with the cookie sheet inside, prepare your pizza on a lightweight cutting board. The trick is to slide the uncooked pizza onto the hot sheet. A dusting of cornmeal on the cutting board will make the pizza positively glide off, but purists will bicker…
      - stevep98 9y ago
        When I tried cornmeal in a pizza oven, I ended up with what looked like black styrofoam. I think the corn 'popped' then burned. What did I do wrong?
        Eric_WVGG 9y ago
        Cornmeal can't pop, it's ground-up kernels.
    - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
      I don't have a hot enough oven either, so the crust isn't as good as a proper pizza establishment. But, I find the overall pizza better than home delivery pizza.
- wiiittttt 9y ago
  Great advice. Another point (related to 4) is don't trust your oven to tell you when it's up to temperature. The oven is measuring the air temperature and not the temperature of the stone/steel. I always make sure to give it about 40 minutes to heat up.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  I did a lot of cast iron tortilla pizza in college, its no joke you can get a really good "pizza" without point 1.
- rlonstein 9y ago
  > 5. Experiment. This. I improvised a pan "pizza" that the whole family likes that's non-traditional but delicious... Dice 1/2lb of thick bacon or pancetta. Dice a few yellow potatoes. While the meat bits brown in a pan, parboil the potatoes. Chop a bunch of rinsed kale. Drain the potatoes. Set aside the meat, reserving the fat in two portions. Cook chopped garlic with a dash of salt in one portion of fat, about a minute, then cook down the kale until it softens and reduces in size, a few minutes. Get a second pan very hot, add the second portion of fat, and fry the potatoes until golden. Before removing the potatoes from the heat, toss with garlic, rosemary, oregano, and a little salt, cooking a minute. Now use these to top a dough and sprinkle with just a couple of ounces of shredded mozzarella and fresh grated romano.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dluan 9y ago
    As a founder of Experiment.com, I just want to say that food is such a fantastic library for small science experimentation. What used to live in cook books and secretive restaurant storage rooms as scribbled recipes has changed because of the internet, we can now try so much more and share it so much more widely than before. It's mind-boggling how deep these new online communities around barbeque, cheesemaking, or sour beer brewing (shoutout to milk the funk) can get, where at a certain point, there's a scientific breakdown of the variables involved. This sort of food science blends anthropology, biology, marketing, and engineering. It's so much fun.
    - ElijahLynn 9y ago
      You should add a 'food' category. I didn't easily find one if there is one.
      - dluan 9y ago
        We've actually had a few: https://experiment.com/projects/does-freezing-cookie-dough-make-the-baked-cookie-softer https://experiment.com/projects/does-freezing-cookie-dough-m... https://experiment.com/projects/the-cookie-monster-how-does-the-type-of-sugar-affect-different-cookies https://experiment.com/projects/the-cookie-monster-how-does-... https://experiment.com/projects/qualitative-survey-of-burritos-in-san-francisco?s=search https://experiment.com/projects/qualitative-survey-of-burrit...
- analog31 9y ago
  3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little bits. I think this is important: Sauce and toppings all compete with the crust for heat.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
givemefive 9y ago
pan pizza http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-pizza-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-piz...
jamesrcole 9y ago
Heston Blumenthal discusses exactly that in his book "In Search of Perfection" https://www.amazon.com/Search-Perfection-Heston-Blumenthal/dp/0747584095 https://www.amazon.com/Search-Perfection-Heston-Blumenthal/d... From memory, it was basically to heat up a cast iron pan to get it very hot and then to sit the pizza on top of that, with the other side of it close to the grill element. He also mentioned how you can use the 'cleaning mode' of some ovens to get up to the required temperature. A description here http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/05/how-to-make-hestons-perfect-in-search-of-perfection-pizza-recipe/ http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/05/how-to-make-hestons-... - see "Step 7: Cooking the Pizza"
panzer_wyrm 9y ago
Thermal mass is your friend. You need something that can hold a lot of heat, is flat, food safe, heatproof, textured and porous. Preheat for an hour and drop the pizza on it. Also turn the infrared broiler. Or blowtorch. Thin crust also helps. Edit: If you can think of way to make the topping stay in place(impossible) , the perfect way to bake a pizza is tandoor. Good pizza is rich flatbread and not casserole on a dough. Which from my observations is the biggest error people make.
- pkroll 9y ago
  Casserole on a dough, or crust, is Chicago's deep dish pizza. Which is glorious, but is a very different beast.
IdontRememberIt 9y ago
It is too cold for a thin pizza (Napoletana). The temperature must be at around 450C! The cooking time is too long and will make it "biscotata" (Amazing video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV4gegZ7JNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV4gegZ7JNU ). With such "cold" oven the best is to cook "nonna" pizza (grand ma'). I think this one is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ws4sTKrdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ws4sTKrdI For the dough, you can use this ones as inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gijjMJiR_q0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gijjMJiR_q0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcD999Ci78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcD999Ci78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-SJGQ2HLp8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-SJGQ2HLp8 Best tip to avoid uncooked dough under the tomato sauce: remove all the possible water from the tomato sauce.
huhtenberg 9y ago
Baking Steel can _sort of_ get you close to a proper pizza oven, but it's expensive, exceptionally heavy and still not quite "it" - http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/09/the-pizza-lab-the-baking-steel-delivers.html http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/09/the-pizza-lab-... Pizza stones or ceramic tiles don't work well in the ovens, even though they are often marketed for oven use. They are great on BBQ grills though. OTOH, the Fool Proof pan pizza is excellent and works every time - http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-pizza-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-piz... PS. There are also small-ish wood-fired ovens for those with a bit of backyard. I can't seem to find it now, but these are made by a specialist company that also sells an unbranded version - https://www.jamieoliverovens.com/wood-fired-ovens/ https://www.jamieoliverovens.com/wood-fired-ovens/
- teh_klev 9y ago
  A buddy of mine has an uuni3 which has baked quite few lovely looking pizzas for him: https://uk.uuni.net/collections/frontpage/products/uuni-3 https://uk.uuni.net/collections/frontpage/products/uuni-3 He also takes it on holidays and trips.
- MegaDeKay 9y ago
  Cast iron is better than ceramics (and will never crack!) but the Steel still comes out on top. Wish I'd have known this before buying my Lodge. This article also links to a roundup of all the other types of pans Kenji tried. http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/10/the-pizza-lab-baking-steel-lodge-cast-iron-pizza.html http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/10/the-pizza-lab-...
  - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
    Doesn't that link suggest that it's primarily the mass, not the material? Steel is just an iron alloy after all, I don't think its thermal properties are much different (but 15lbs of steel will transfer more heat to your pizza than 10lbs of cast iron). Also cast iron can certainly crack, if it's dropped on a hard surface, or thermally shocked (but it is tougher than most ceramics).
crispyambulance 9y ago
If you have an outdoor grill, put a pizza stone on it that and use that to make your pizza (after preheating of course). Your outdoor grill can reach higher temps than a kitchen oven. If you're going to go heavy on the toppings, bake the the dough for a while, then add toppings.
jacobparker 9y ago
https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Pizza-Unlocking-Secrets-World-Class/dp/160774838X https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Pizza-Unlocking-Secrets-World... I've been reading this book and it has a good mix of history/context, technique and recipes. It is aimed at folks with a regular oven. Its process for Margherita is multi-step and uses the broiler aggressively; more than I would normally be comfortable with. The output from my regular oven (max 550 C) matches the cover image from the book. The dough is key, though. I like high salt, low yeast, long fermentation styles. I'm still doing trials with different flour (e.g. caputo 00, blue bag (a standard pizza flour) vs. generic all-purpose flour) to suss out the difference flour makes but the book goes into this in depth, including a basic overview of what the different ingredients are for, chemically, to give you a sense of why some recipes are different (long vs. short fermentation influences amount of yeast/salt.)
ashark 9y ago
I get ok results even with thin crust at 550F. Baking stone is a must. Cover with parchment paper right before putting the pizza on, optionally (we had issues with our stones cracking before we started doing that). You want a peel. Coarse ground cornmeal, coarse Durham wheat flour, and other course-ground wheat products all work well to keep your dough mobile. Make sure you can shake it on the peel before trying to transfer. Build the pizza on the peel or you'll make a mess of it. You can probably get away with a lower oven temp with pan pizza. Oil cast iron pan, preheat oven. Build pizza in pan (dough running up the sides). Cook on stovetop until it starts to sizzle (I also hit the top with a heat gun at this point, but you don't have to). Move to oven, turn broiler on, cook until the top looks done. May take some experimentation, but it takes less equipment than using a stone and peel. Note: I haven't done this one in a while and I think maybe I cooked it for a few minutes before kicking in the broiler, but I'm not sure. Experiment. You can make pretty good pizza with dough made in a bread machine. If you have one, consider starting with that. Much easier. [EDIT] more lifehack protips now that I have a keyboard: 1) If you like pepperoni pizza, try the sandwich-slice stuff at the deli counter. Even the cheaper varieties of this are better than the small ones you find in packages. If you're going to a real deli or whatever keep doing what you're doing, but this will help with ordinary grocery store shopping. 2) You don't have to have fresh mozz for every pie (though man is it good) but do spend up slightly on the cheese if you can, and favor block over pre-shredded (no anti-caking agents in the block cheese). HOWEVER, as long as you don't get the absolute worst cheese you can find, cheaping out a bit here will not ruin your pizza, it just won't be as good. You can still beat all the major chains with Kraft. Also: consider mixing in other stuff with your mozz for some depth, especially if you're not paying for high-end cheese. Provolone's a common option. 3) Don't spend a ton on San Marzano (or "San Marzano Style") canned tomatoes, unless it's a really special pizza. If you garden, consider growing your own San Marzanos and canning (you'll have too many to use in a Summer even with just 3-4 plants)—it's the very best option, flavor wise. Having-a-religious-moment good. For your everyday pizza just get decent canned tomatoes. Do not use fresh tomatoes unless you know the person who grew them (this goes for practically any dish that calls for tomatoes). Again, you're gonna have to buy the worst canned tomatoes you can possibly find to maybe make your pizza worse than the major chains—not that they necessarily use tomatoes that bad, but home-made pizza tends to be so good that you have to really screw up ingredient selection to ruin it, though obviously good ingredients are necessary if you want to achieve Pizza Nirvana. 4) Beware under-salting your dough and sauce. No, that recipe you found isn't wrong, and yes you should put that much black pepper in pizza sauce. In fact maybe give it another couple turns.
yason 9y ago
We can settle with "good enough" which is a popular way to a pleasant mental state in general, too. Every time I've made pizza the stuff I've put in the oven has been pretty good when I take it out. The pizza usually comes with a very short time window for availability: then it's gone. It probably requires great talent to majorly fail a pizza. If you only fail your pizza slightly, it's still damn good. Now, I'm quite sure that you can even objectively establish that there are better pizzas than what I make. The point is then: why would I care if I'm happy with whatever I currently make? If I fell in love with a truly, absolutely and universally the greatest pizza then I'd just be disappointed with my own pizzas afterwards and I'd have to learn how to make those great pizzas. Instead of an upgrade that actually sounds more like a net loss to me because now I have to work to get back to where I was, i.e. happy with my pizza. If you're happy with your pizzas, change nothing and continue.
uxp100 9y ago
Doesn't the article cover this? No one seems to be saying what I thought the article said, but I don't "know" pizza. He broke the safety latch off his oven and put a piece of foil over the sensor, and runs his oven on Clean mode.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
riffraff 9y ago
you can make good pizza in a normal oven, it will not be the same as a proper oven, but can definitely be good, and generally better than what you can get in a random pizza place outside of Italy. OTOH, you can get something like this for ~100€, https://www.g3ferrari.net/en/pizzeria-snack-napoletana-p153 https://www.g3ferrari.net/en/pizzeria-snack-napoletana-p153
MikeTaylor 9y ago
SO MUCH GREAT ADVICE! Thank you all, folks, this has been an education.
exclusiv 9y ago
On a related note - I'd highly recommend doing Khachapuri [1]. You'll get experience with making dough and it turns out great in the oven. [1] http://simplyhomecooked.com/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread/ http://simplyhomecooked.com/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread...
analog31 9y ago
For me, part of it is simply tempering my expectations. I don't attempt to make "authentic" restaurant style pizza. What I can do instead is make a tasty meal that the family enjoys, fairly quickly and cheaply. We have pizza every Saturday, so it also has to be something that we can work into our routine.

markild 9y ago

I will not claim to honestly "know" pizza, but in my experience, turning your oven up to max with a baking steel (or stone), can give great results, without the need of anything that breaks the bank.

dsr_ 9y ago

1. Make great dough. The ingredients are cheap, it doesn't take much manual time -- but you want to let it ferment in your refrigerator at least overnight. 2. Make your own sauce. The ingredients are cheap, and a little experimentation will get it to the taste that you want. 3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little bits. 4. Transfer as much heat as possible to the bottom of your crust. You can use a baking steel, a pizza stone, or unglazed fire tiles available for less than $10 at your local hardware store. Put them in the oven exactly where you want your pizza to go, then fire it all the way up. 5. Experiment. The first few pizzas you make will vary wildly from "almost what I want" to "maybe I shouldn't make pizza". Keep going. Take notes. And if you don't have an oven at all, consider getting a cast iron frying pan and try for a completely different kind of pizza: http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/08/cast-iron-pizza-tortilla-video-recipe-food-lab.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/08/cast-iron-pizza-tortilla-...

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
I've been making my own pizza at home for around a decade now and your 5 points are very good advice. I think 5 is probably the most important. I have recently been on a calzone kick[0] and have been experimenting with different ratios of cheeses. [0] Not sure why I've never tried before. I guess because the pizza's been so good.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
  What kind of results are you guys getting? I tried for a while but then gave up. Just not hot enough. I actually found Jeff's recipe waaay back before he opened his restaurant, I remember him announcing it, and I was really upset when I got to the oven temperatures.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Better than anything but the fancy, expensive pizza joints around here. 550F max oven. Even bread machine dough pizza comes out pretty damn good. Hard to do worse than major chain pizza, certainly, unless you accidentally leave out crucial ingredients or have some similarly disastrous mishap.
  - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
    I've found that you can coax some extra heat from an uncooperative oven via a cast iron "cookie sheet" (flat side of a griddle). https://www.amazon.com/Lodge-LDP3-Reversible-9-5-inch-16-75-inch/dp/B002CMLTXG https://www.amazon.com/Lodge-LDP3-Reversible-9-5-inch-16-75-... (flat side) Preheat the oven with the cookie sheet inside, prepare your pizza on a lightweight cutting board. The trick is to slide the uncooked pizza onto the hot sheet. A dusting of cornmeal on the cutting board will make the pizza positively glide off, but purists will bicker…
    - stevep98 9y ago
      When I tried cornmeal in a pizza oven, I ended up with what looked like black styrofoam. I think the corn 'popped' then burned. What did I do wrong?
      - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
        Cornmeal can't pop, it's ground-up kernels.
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    I don't have a hot enough oven either, so the crust isn't as good as a proper pizza establishment. But, I find the overall pizza better than home delivery pizza.
wiiittttt 9y ago
Great advice. Another point (related to 4) is don't trust your oven to tell you when it's up to temperature. The oven is measuring the air temperature and not the temperature of the stone/steel. I always make sure to give it about 40 minutes to heat up.
graphitezepp 9y ago
I did a lot of cast iron tortilla pizza in college, its no joke you can get a really good "pizza" without point 1.
rlonstein 9y ago
> 5. Experiment. This. I improvised a pan "pizza" that the whole family likes that's non-traditional but delicious... Dice 1/2lb of thick bacon or pancetta. Dice a few yellow potatoes. While the meat bits brown in a pan, parboil the potatoes. Chop a bunch of rinsed kale. Drain the potatoes. Set aside the meat, reserving the fat in two portions. Cook chopped garlic with a dash of salt in one portion of fat, about a minute, then cook down the kale until it softens and reduces in size, a few minutes. Get a second pan very hot, add the second portion of fat, and fry the potatoes until golden. Before removing the potatoes from the heat, toss with garlic, rosemary, oregano, and a little salt, cooking a minute. Now use these to top a dough and sprinkle with just a couple of ounces of shredded mozzarella and fresh grated romano.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dluan 9y ago
  As a founder of Experiment.com, I just want to say that food is such a fantastic library for small science experimentation. What used to live in cook books and secretive restaurant storage rooms as scribbled recipes has changed because of the internet, we can now try so much more and share it so much more widely than before. It's mind-boggling how deep these new online communities around barbeque, cheesemaking, or sour beer brewing (shoutout to milk the funk) can get, where at a certain point, there's a scientific breakdown of the variables involved. This sort of food science blends anthropology, biology, marketing, and engineering. It's so much fun.
  - ElijahLynn 9y ago
    You should add a 'food' category. I didn't easily find one if there is one.
    - dluan 9y ago
      We've actually had a few: https://experiment.com/projects/does-freezing-cookie-dough-make-the-baked-cookie-softer https://experiment.com/projects/does-freezing-cookie-dough-m... https://experiment.com/projects/the-cookie-monster-how-does-the-type-of-sugar-affect-different-cookies https://experiment.com/projects/the-cookie-monster-how-does-... https://experiment.com/projects/qualitative-survey-of-burritos-in-san-francisco?s=search https://experiment.com/projects/qualitative-survey-of-burrit...
analog31 9y ago
3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little bits. I think this is important: Sauce and toppings all compete with the crust for heat.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

givemefive 9y ago

pan pizza http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-pizza-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-piz...

jamesrcole 9y ago

Heston Blumenthal discusses exactly that in his book "In Search of Perfection" https://www.amazon.com/Search-Perfection-Heston-Blumenthal/dp/0747584095 https://www.amazon.com/Search-Perfection-Heston-Blumenthal/d... From memory, it was basically to heat up a cast iron pan to get it very hot and then to sit the pizza on top of that, with the other side of it close to the grill element. He also mentioned how you can use the 'cleaning mode' of some ovens to get up to the required temperature. A description here http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/05/how-to-make-hestons-perfect-in-search-of-perfection-pizza-recipe/ http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/05/how-to-make-hestons-... - see "Step 7: Cooking the Pizza"

panzer_wyrm 9y ago

Thermal mass is your friend. You need something that can hold a lot of heat, is flat, food safe, heatproof, textured and porous. Preheat for an hour and drop the pizza on it. Also turn the infrared broiler. Or blowtorch. Thin crust also helps. Edit: If you can think of way to make the topping stay in place(impossible) , the perfect way to bake a pizza is tandoor. Good pizza is rich flatbread and not casserole on a dough. Which from my observations is the biggest error people make.

pkroll 9y ago
Casserole on a dough, or crust, is Chicago's deep dish pizza. Which is glorious, but is a very different beast.

IdontRememberIt 9y ago

It is too cold for a thin pizza (Napoletana). The temperature must be at around 450C! The cooking time is too long and will make it "biscotata" (Amazing video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV4gegZ7JNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV4gegZ7JNU ). With such "cold" oven the best is to cook "nonna" pizza (grand ma'). I think this one is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ws4sTKrdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ws4sTKrdI For the dough, you can use this ones as inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gijjMJiR_q0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gijjMJiR_q0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcD999Ci78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcD999Ci78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-SJGQ2HLp8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-SJGQ2HLp8 Best tip to avoid uncooked dough under the tomato sauce: remove all the possible water from the tomato sauce.

huhtenberg 9y ago

Baking Steel can _sort of_ get you close to a proper pizza oven, but it's expensive, exceptionally heavy and still not quite "it" - http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/09/the-pizza-lab-the-baking-steel-delivers.html http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/09/the-pizza-lab-... Pizza stones or ceramic tiles don't work well in the ovens, even though they are often marketed for oven use. They are great on BBQ grills though. OTOH, the Fool Proof pan pizza is excellent and works every time - http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-pizza-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-piz... PS. There are also small-ish wood-fired ovens for those with a bit of backyard. I can't seem to find it now, but these are made by a specialist company that also sells an unbranded version - https://www.jamieoliverovens.com/wood-fired-ovens/ https://www.jamieoliverovens.com/wood-fired-ovens/

teh_klev 9y ago
A buddy of mine has an uuni3 which has baked quite few lovely looking pizzas for him: https://uk.uuni.net/collections/frontpage/products/uuni-3 https://uk.uuni.net/collections/frontpage/products/uuni-3 He also takes it on holidays and trips.
MegaDeKay 9y ago
Cast iron is better than ceramics (and will never crack!) but the Steel still comes out on top. Wish I'd have known this before buying my Lodge. This article also links to a roundup of all the other types of pans Kenji tried. http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/10/the-pizza-lab-baking-steel-lodge-cast-iron-pizza.html http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/10/the-pizza-lab-...
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  Doesn't that link suggest that it's primarily the mass, not the material? Steel is just an iron alloy after all, I don't think its thermal properties are much different (but 15lbs of steel will transfer more heat to your pizza than 10lbs of cast iron). Also cast iron can certainly crack, if it's dropped on a hard surface, or thermally shocked (but it is tougher than most ceramics).

crispyambulance 9y ago

If you have an outdoor grill, put a pizza stone on it that and use that to make your pizza (after preheating of course). Your outdoor grill can reach higher temps than a kitchen oven. If you're going to go heavy on the toppings, bake the the dough for a while, then add toppings.

jacobparker 9y ago

https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Pizza-Unlocking-Secrets-World-Class/dp/160774838X https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Pizza-Unlocking-Secrets-World... I've been reading this book and it has a good mix of history/context, technique and recipes. It is aimed at folks with a regular oven. Its process for Margherita is multi-step and uses the broiler aggressively; more than I would normally be comfortable with. The output from my regular oven (max 550 C) matches the cover image from the book. The dough is key, though. I like high salt, low yeast, long fermentation styles. I'm still doing trials with different flour (e.g. caputo 00, blue bag (a standard pizza flour) vs. generic all-purpose flour) to suss out the difference flour makes but the book goes into this in depth, including a basic overview of what the different ingredients are for, chemically, to give you a sense of why some recipes are different (long vs. short fermentation influences amount of yeast/salt.)

ashark 9y ago

I get ok results even with thin crust at 550F. Baking stone is a must. Cover with parchment paper right before putting the pizza on, optionally (we had issues with our stones cracking before we started doing that). You want a peel. Coarse ground cornmeal, coarse Durham wheat flour, and other course-ground wheat products all work well to keep your dough mobile. Make sure you can shake it on the peel before trying to transfer. Build the pizza on the peel or you'll make a mess of it. You can probably get away with a lower oven temp with pan pizza. Oil cast iron pan, preheat oven. Build pizza in pan (dough running up the sides). Cook on stovetop until it starts to sizzle (I also hit the top with a heat gun at this point, but you don't have to). Move to oven, turn broiler on, cook until the top looks done. May take some experimentation, but it takes less equipment than using a stone and peel. Note: I haven't done this one in a while and I think maybe I cooked it for a few minutes before kicking in the broiler, but I'm not sure. Experiment. You can make pretty good pizza with dough made in a bread machine. If you have one, consider starting with that. Much easier. [EDIT] more lifehack protips now that I have a keyboard: 1) If you like pepperoni pizza, try the sandwich-slice stuff at the deli counter. Even the cheaper varieties of this are better than the small ones you find in packages. If you're going to a real deli or whatever keep doing what you're doing, but this will help with ordinary grocery store shopping. 2) You don't have to have fresh mozz for every pie (though man is it good) but do spend up slightly on the cheese if you can, and favor block over pre-shredded (no anti-caking agents in the block cheese). HOWEVER, as long as you don't get the absolute worst cheese you can find, cheaping out a bit here will not ruin your pizza, it just won't be as good. You can still beat all the major chains with Kraft. Also: consider mixing in other stuff with your mozz for some depth, especially if you're not paying for high-end cheese. Provolone's a common option. 3) Don't spend a ton on San Marzano (or "San Marzano Style") canned tomatoes, unless it's a really special pizza. If you garden, consider growing your own San Marzanos and canning (you'll have too many to use in a Summer even with just 3-4 plants)—it's the very best option, flavor wise. Having-a-religious-moment good. For your everyday pizza just get decent canned tomatoes. Do not use fresh tomatoes unless you know the person who grew them (this goes for practically any dish that calls for tomatoes). Again, you're gonna have to buy the worst canned tomatoes you can possibly find to maybe make your pizza worse than the major chains—not that they necessarily use tomatoes that bad, but home-made pizza tends to be so good that you have to really screw up ingredient selection to ruin it, though obviously good ingredients are necessary if you want to achieve Pizza Nirvana. 4) Beware under-salting your dough and sauce. No, that recipe you found isn't wrong, and yes you should put that much black pepper in pizza sauce. In fact maybe give it another couple turns.

yason 9y ago

We can settle with "good enough" which is a popular way to a pleasant mental state in general, too. Every time I've made pizza the stuff I've put in the oven has been pretty good when I take it out. The pizza usually comes with a very short time window for availability: then it's gone. It probably requires great talent to majorly fail a pizza. If you only fail your pizza slightly, it's still damn good. Now, I'm quite sure that you can even objectively establish that there are better pizzas than what I make. The point is then: why would I care if I'm happy with whatever I currently make? If I fell in love with a truly, absolutely and universally the greatest pizza then I'd just be disappointed with my own pizzas afterwards and I'd have to learn how to make those great pizzas. Instead of an upgrade that actually sounds more like a net loss to me because now I have to work to get back to where I was, i.e. happy with my pizza. If you're happy with your pizzas, change nothing and continue.

uxp100 9y ago

Doesn't the article cover this? No one seems to be saying what I thought the article said, but I don't "know" pizza. He broke the safety latch off his oven and put a piece of foil over the sensor, and runs his oven on Clean mode.

deleted 9y ago

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riffraff 9y ago

you can make good pizza in a normal oven, it will not be the same as a proper oven, but can definitely be good, and generally better than what you can get in a random pizza place outside of Italy. OTOH, you can get something like this for ~100€, https://www.g3ferrari.net/en/pizzeria-snack-napoletana-p153 https://www.g3ferrari.net/en/pizzeria-snack-napoletana-p153

MikeTaylor 9y ago

SO MUCH GREAT ADVICE! Thank you all, folks, this has been an education.

exclusiv 9y ago

On a related note - I'd highly recommend doing Khachapuri [1]. You'll get experience with making dough and it turns out great in the oven. [1] http://simplyhomecooked.com/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread/ http://simplyhomecooked.com/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread...

analog31 9y ago

For me, part of it is simply tempering my expectations. I don't attempt to make "authentic" restaurant style pizza. What I can do instead is make a tasty meal that the family enjoys, fairly quickly and cheaply. We have pizza every Saturday, so it also has to be something that we can work into our routine.