The dough itself is simple, almost lean 'NY-style' dough:
a simple 70% hydration dough, 2% salt, 2% yeast with 50-50 mix of Costco's AP and Caputo brand chef flours. A bit of olive oil, bit of sugar, for browning in my oven based on trial/error. Mix in a mixer of your choice (I used my bread machine dough setting for small batches, KA stand mixer when I want to have pizza more than 2x a week, no difference).
After gluten is developed--about 20 minutes of mixing, retard in the fridge for around half to one full day.
When you are ready, punch them down, portion them into balls, and let it acclimatize to around room temp
Preheat your oven if needed. If you have access to a heat source that perpetually outputs high temp, you can skip this step.
(FYI--I have a cordierite stone in my oven and it preheats to 645 in around 45 minutes, so the following steps are based on that)
15 minutes into the preheat, I shape shape shape, turn turn turn, stretch stretch stretch, then I wait for the oven to go up to temp.
When it's up to temp, I slather sauce, strew cheese mix, then pepperoni.
set timer, then plop into oven, run timer. watch closely if you have a glass window. if no window, turn every 30-45s or so. you may need to turn the pizza multiple times if you have a tiny oven like I do to get even browning.
around the 4-5m mark, your pizza should be done. look for even browning of crust and spot browning/sheen of the cheese.
note on temperature: once that oven door is open, the temperature will drop. After a preheat to 645, my oven will hover around 610-640 with the turning etc. The average bake temp will be somewhere in the middle, say 625.
final note: trust your instincts and what you know about pizza, sure, each oven has different thermodynamics, but good pizza won't smell burnt (I made one too many burnt pizzas ha ha ha..)
