3 hours ago, boilsover said:Don't you subscribe to the theory that the shortest bake is best?
Oh, boy, that's a loaded question. I'm a huge believer in tradition (Cue song from Fiddler on the Roof 
) The prevalent styles didn't instantly erupt from a vacuum. They were honed over the course of decades/centuries by incredibly talented artisans. There's a reason why Neapolitan style pizza is so renowned and also a reason why NY style is so ubiquitous. These two styles have been able to take over the world because experienced tradespeople fine tuned them to magnificence. I'm not knocking innovation, we know considerably more about the science of pizza now than we did 25 years ago, and where the science has been thoroughly proven (such as the benefits of long cold fermentation), it should be incorporated, but, for the most part, re-inventing the wheel is unnecessary. Traditional Neapolitan pizza, as I said, is phenomenal. Every component of Neapolitan pizza, though, is critical. Deviate from the proven formula, fail. Change up the flour, fail. Bake it longer, fail (big time). If you have a Neapolitan capable oven, then absolutely, get your hands on the right flour, use the proven formula, bake it up in less than 90 seconds and experience bliss through that avenue. But with a home oven with your broiler (with pretty much all broilers), you're limited to NY style, and NY style truly excels within a handful of parameters.
If you take Neapolitan dough and bake it for 4 minutes, the resulting pizza will be drastically inferior to a 90 second bake. It'll have a dense, pale, hard, crunchy, stale quality that no one prefers. When you start getting into 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 minute NY style bakes, though, the differences are not quite so dramatic, and it gets far more subjective. I have a working theory, that, as conscientious pizzerias of the 1960s through the 1980s became more popular, as demand increased, they had to run their ovens hotter to meet that demand, and as as they shortened the bake time, the pizza improved, which drove their popularity even further. That's been my experience with some of the famous places that I've frequently over the years, such as Joe's in the Village and Pizzatown in NJ. It's my very strong contention that these 4-5 minute pizza producing juggernauts were what put NY style pizza on the map. My zealotry over the innate superiority of this 4-5 minute bake and what I believe is overwhelming evidence supporting it's historical significance is what got me ostracized from my community, and, to an extent, jeopardized my pizzeria consulting business. So, when I tell you that 4-5 minute NY is better, it's not a casual preference 
I've put my livelihood on the line defending this sub-style.
As far as 3 for NY goes, nobody's really fighting for 3. Pizzeria Bianco might be 3, but that's an entirely different universe, ingredient and oven wise, and, from the people I know who have tried, it seems to be extraordinarily difficult to reverse engineer. As I said before, if you're really hell bent on char, with a strong enough broiler, you can achieve a slightly Neapolitan-ish undercrust with a NY top, but that's pretty niche, and pretty far from crowd pleasing. 3 has zero historical precedent in NY, aged mozzarella can be problematic in that time frame, and, side by side, I would wager that easily 9 out 10 people will prefer 4 minute NY to 3. The real battle lines are drawn between 4 and 7. For that it comes down to a preference between puff and golden brown crispiness. If you want a crispier pie, you should definitely lower the steel temp and push the bake time. Not that 4 can't be crispy (or that 7 can't be puffy), but 4 maximizes puff, while 7 maximizes crispiness.
3 hours ago, boilsover said:No. It's on >98% of the time. When it cuts out, I crack the door and it comes right back on.
I stand corrected. If your pizza is within 6" of the broiler (generally top or 2nd shelf), and your broiler is on for the entire 3 minutes and you're not seeing an exceptionally dark top in that time, then it's definitely a weak broiler. Let me guess, is this a gas oven? Or might it be a newer, fancier oven with a special broiler technology?
There are other approaches to help maximize top browning, btw. Room temp sauce helps. Open your can of tomatoes, mix in the other ingredients, let it sit for at least an hour to let the flavors mingle, then use. You can also look at your dough formula if the crust isn't browning. A huge browning inhibitor is the excessive water quantities that some of these beginning recipes (such as Kenji's) gravitate towards. Kenji's recipes draw from bread baker's recipes, which work perfectly fine for bread, but are not ideal for pizza. For pizza, you want to be at or near a flour's absorption value. For King Arthur bread flour, that's around 62% hydration. NY style dough should also contain at least some sugar and some oil. Lastly, a big player in top browning is topping quantity. A thicker crusted, heavily topped, chain inspired modern NY style pie is not where you want to be with fast bakes on steel. It's not easy, but you want to stretch the dough pretty thin, and you want to keep the toppings nice and sparse- sparse, and, also, for wet toppings like mushrooms, pre-cooked.
3 hours ago, boilsover said:What do you suggest that temperature be for a 4-minute pie on a 1/2" steel?
I would see what 525 gives you on the undercrust in 4 minutes, and, if that's still too dark, dial it down to 500. And that's a bake cycle only pre-heat, not a bake cycle followed by a broil cycle to drive it a bit higher. Broil pre-heats can be a bit problematic. Pizza bakes from the heat stored in the entire steel, so you might drive up the surface temp a bit, but at the same time, the temp on the bottom of the steel drops. Net, you might see a slight bump, but you also introduce a certain level of inconsistency as well, since an IR thermometer only tells you surface temp, not core. Once you'd done this a few times, you don't have to be quite so precise about it, but it really helps to pre-heat the oven for a set amount of time (say 1 hour) using the bake cycle only. That way, you have a very good idea what temperature the core of the steel is, and, be in a good position to make adjustments based on your target bake time.
For second and third pies, if you feel like the pie 1 undercrust was a bit light, and you need a quick burst of heat to help recover, there's nothing wrong with some broiler between bakes.
