ISO Better pizza: Do I need a pizza oven?

[jeffZ]

From what I can see by reading, eating and learning about pizza much has to do with the high heat that a proper pizza cooks at. Most suggest between 800-1000 degrees. Some suggest wood-burning, coal-burning, brick, etc. but the thing most everyone agrees on is the high heat.

I've experimented with the flour. My dough is pretty decent. I now like the 00 flour that the folks from Naples swear by. I think I've kept the simplicity and quality of the actual pizza pretty well no matter what toppings I go with. I preheat my oven as hot as it can go, 500 degress, and I use a pizza stone (at least 30-45 minutes pre-heated).

I just still can't get the results I'm looking for. Short of buying a pizza oven which would make no sense for me, can I pull it off on my Weber grill? Maybe with some burning wood in there? Some have said they can get much hotter temps that way.

My last white clam pizza came out OK, but just wasn't cooked fast enough and with the proper crisp... thanks in advance.

[fiftydollars]

Jeffrey Steingarten wrote an essay in which, while on a similar mission, he rigged his oven so he could use the self-cleaning cycle to make pizza.

[deltadoc]

I have a thick rectangular pizza stone, which I pre-heat to 550 F for at least an hour before I put the pizza on it. Takes about 12 minutes for the thin crust pizza I make.

It comes out perfect on the bottom, cooked all the way through, without having dried up the sauce, and the mozz is just slightly starting to carmelize.

Yum!

doc

[rlibkind]

I've had great results using my Weber Silver B gas grill. It gets up to at least 600-F (maybe a little bit more), and while that's not as hot as a commercial oven, it does the job nicely when you've pre-heated a pizza stone.

[Mottmott]

For those cooking with gas: do you put the pizza stone on the floor of the oven or the bottom shelf?

[mrbigjas]

i put it on the floor. the burner is in the floor below a little platform, which coincidentally is exactly the size of my pizza stone. works pretty good. heating it up to 550 for a long time first, the first pizza cooks in 5+ minutes, if i make it really thin.

[slkinsey]

It depends on your definition of "a decent pie."

Can you make a pizza that is as good as what you're likely to get in 95% of American pizzerie out of a stainless steel deck oven? Absolutely. Better, probably.

Can you make a pizza like they're pulling out of the ovens at Franny's or Sally's or Pizzeria Bianco in your home oven? No way.

[jeffZ]

My definition of decent pie would be nicely browned (on the bottom, slightly charred) and a good cook through with a slightly chewy crust. Toppings are another story. But I feel like I'm not able to achieve this with my current cook method.

My oven only goes to 500 degrees and because of that my pies are taking between 12-14 minutes to cook. And when you get to this amount of time the dough seems to get almost cracker-like if you make it thin.

Maybe I should do some more experimenting with the dough to compensate.

[JayBassin]

I have a thick rectangular pizza stone, which I pre-heat to 550 F for at least an hour before I put the pizza on it.  Takes about 12 minutes for the thin crust pizza I make.

It comes out perfect on the bottom, cooked all the way through, without having dried up the sauce, and the mozz is just slightly starting to carmelize.

Yum!

doc

←

Same here, except I use quarry tiles set on the bottom rack of the oven. First time I buy quarry tiles, I put them through the "self-cleaning" cycle, which ought to blow out any offgases.

edited to add: Should have mentioned my oven is electric.

Edited September 27, 2005 by JayBassin (log)

[francois]

You can make great pizza at home, certainly much better than any that I ever had in a pizza place or in a restaurant (I must admit that I never went to these great pizzaria than I read about in food mags). I guess it is a matter of taste - my kids still prefer the one we order one.

Peter Reinhart has a nice book on pizza.

I had to experiment with crusts, toppings and oven temperatures and preheat times. I also got some pretty good results on my gas BBQ but not as good as in my oven. I keep that for those summer days when it is too hot to use the oven.

I put my stone on the shelf that is second from the bottom. I found this is where I get the best results. Having a convection oven makes a big difference!

[JayBassin]

I put my stone on the shelf that is second from the bottom.  I found this is where I get the best results.  Having a convection oven makes a big difference!

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My convection oven goes to 550 F in nonconvection mode, but only 525 F in convection mode. After some experimentation, I figured that preheating the quarry tiles to 550 (nonconvection) was better---the pizza gets most of its cooking from the hot tile and radiated heat from the walls and it's not in the oven long enough to benefit from the more even ambient air temp--not enough to make up for the lower temperature.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Does anyone else here "blind bake" or parbake the pizza crust before putting it on the preheated stone?

[slkinsey]

My definition of decent pie would be nicely browned (on the bottom, slightly charred) and a good cook through with a slightly chewy crust.

The difficulty is in getting the bottom crisped & slightly charred in spots while still preserving the soft pliability of the crust and without browning the toppings. This is more or less impossible to do in a home oven. By the time the bottom is cooked properly, the crust is inevitably dried out a bit too much and the toppings a bit more done than you would like.

I've been cooking pizza at home for years, and have refined my technique quite a bit to get the best result. Here are some examples of pizza I made at home cooked on top of a massively preheated heavy slate stone. They are more or less Neapolitan style.

Sausage and ramps.

Margherita.

The yellow color is from olive oil, not browning of the cheese

Browning on the bottom of the crust.

This is possible with a very wet dough, stretched very thin, minimally topped and baked on a very heavy stone that has been preheated on the bottom of a gas fired stove for at least an hour. Total cooking time maybe 5 minutes. Even then, the crust tends to be stiffer than I would prefer.

I have a thick rectangular pizza stone, which I pre-heat to 550 F for at least an hour before I put the pizza on it.  Takes about 12 minutes for the thin crust pizza I make.

It comes out perfect on the bottom, cooked all the way through, without having dried up the sauce, and the mozz is just slightly starting to carmelize.

This has always been a major sticking point for me in using a home oven. I don't want the mozzarella to brown. IMO, a pizza should be dotted with snow white blobs of just-melted fresh mozzarella.

[Busboy]

The short answer, as Sam said, is that you can cook a pizza that will make you weep with joy at home.

The long answer is here, the eGullet thread about how to do just that, featuring the accumulated wisdom of many a dedicated home cook.

[CharityCase]

When left to preheat for 30 minutes set to 500 my electric oven can reach 525 or so, but it's so horribly inefficient that when I open the door to put the pie in it immediately drops 50 degrees and takes as long to heat up as the pie takes to cook: 12 minutes or so.

I've yet to get a proper dark crust anywhere but the outside edges...the rest cooks but the inside areas of the crust are only off-white.

I'll have to try moving the stone lower, as up until now I'd been using the centre rack of the oven.

[Patrick S]

I'll have to try moving the stone lower, as up until now I'd been using the centre rack of the oven.

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I moved my stone on the bottom rack, and that definitely seemed to help my crust.

[Digijam]

Does anyone else here "blind bake" or parbake the pizza crust before putting it on the preheated stone?

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I've tried baking it in a dusted steel pan on top of the stove, heating it as I add the toppings, then putting it into the pre-heated oven. Helps get oven cooking time down to about 6 minutes. Though it doesn't solve the toppings problem - still need to pre-cook the tomato to approximate the higher temp caramelising of a real pizza oven.

[Shalmanese]

Has anyone tried pre-heating the pizza stone and then working it over with a blowtorch to get the stone ultra-hot? I imagine that would allow you to replicate the crispy bottom effect.

[scott123]

Vulcan style ovens (what most pizzerias use, i.e. the non neopolitan route) rely to a great extent on heat retention. Until I came to eG, I was under the assumption that good pizza was about super high temps. That's true for wood burning neopolitan style pies, but not for your average neighborhood pizza, which, as I said, happens to be my favorite. The superior heat retentive qualities of these units stem from thick hearths, walls and ceilings. That's my secret for vulcan style pizza at home- a thick stone box surrounding the pie. I'm also a huge fan of a very lean, retarded (cool rise) dough, made from commercial bread flour and commercial yeast, pulled extremely thin. A thin crust can be really hard to work with but I find it guarantees the characteristic floppiness and also helps to transfer heat up to the cheese far more effectively. I've done a lot of tests with cheese and have found that I far prefer cheese that bubbles from intense bottom heat rather than browns from top heat. Bubbling cheese releases so much more of it's butterfat, and is, imho, more flavorful/better tasting than a cheese that's browned on the top but relatively undercooked below. Again, this is a Vulcan style pizza issue, applying more to packaged mozz, rather than the fresh stuff. I've noticed that fresh mozz has a tendency to bubble regardless of where the heat source is originating, be it top, bottom or side.

[rgruby]

Ok,

I had exactly one shift in an Italian pizzeria (in Emilia), so take this with a big large pinch of salt.

I don't think the dough matters all that much. I think it's (mostly) the oven.

Those ovens ( this was a wood fired one) are massively hot and retain their heat like nobodies business. It's no wonder they and tandoori ovens (which, while a different shape, are not dissimilar) both get that slightly charred crisp on the bottom but chewy texture that I cannot for the life of me get with a convection oven at its highest heat (with the thickest pizza stone I could find) with hour long preheats and the same dough recipe I used in Italy (ish - different flour, scaling down etc could account for some differences).

The pizzas we were cooking in Italy took a minute or two. Max. In my oven, they're about double that. Still pretty quick. And they're damned tasty if I do say so myself. But the crust just ain't quite there. So, do you really need a pizza oven? It depends. I think you can get 90% there - certainly a really good pizza. But to get that pizzeria quality pie - Italian style - I honestly think you need something that will give you that (huge) heat from the bottom. A stone helps, but is not even close to what those clay tiled ovens in Italy are producing. And, yeah, it matters.

Sorry.

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[TPO]

My oven is quite small, which makes it a pain for cooking most things. But when it comes to pizza it does a great job. I've always thought that the small oven was the reason, as many pizza ovens also are small.

This makes me wonder about oven inserts. I have seen instructions for making one, but they also are available to buy. Has anyone ever tries doing something like this for pizza?

[rlibkind]

So, do you really need a pizza oven? It depends. I think you can get 90% there - certainly a really good pizza. But to get that pizzeria quality pie - Italian style - I honestly think you need something that will give you that (huge) heat from the bottom. A stone helps, but is not even close to what those clay tiled ovens in Italy are producing. And, yeah, it matters.

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And that's one of the key reasons we all go to restaurants: to enjoy what we can't get at home. (Though it's fun, sometimes to try.)

I'll make one more pitch: use an outdoor gas grill with a stone. You can even lay in bricks. It comes closer than most home ovens ever will.

[skoolpsyk]

Ok, I've been contemplating making a pizza oven in the backyard, but because we live in a high risk fire area I really can't make it wood-burning. It's just not worth the risk if any embers, sparks, or anything got loose.

So my alternate was to make one heated by propane, maybe using one of the high-heat burners like for the deep-fried turkey kits.

But, will this also not get me to the proper temperature? If I make the walls really thick could it work; or is there just a limit depending on the type of fuel that is used?