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greglepore greglepore is online now
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Charlottesville Va
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So probably more than you want to know, but this is the best home pizza stuff I've read: https://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

I don't "hack" my oven like he does to get 900+ temps, nor do I cover my glass. I do use my oven set to broil. I don't use the lower oven heat at all. I have a highish end oven (Dacor) where the broil temp is in theory 555, but I routinely see 740ish at the steel (using an infrared gun thermometer) after 45 min to an hour. I did hack a prior oven with a thermostat cuttout switch to the broiler circuit, wasn't worth the trouble, and I did crack the inner glass with a drip.

Look around for a steel-there are folks on amazon and ebay that'll just sell an appropriately cut piece of 1/4 steel (or so) without the premium of a branded "pizza steel". They all need to be seasoned somewhat.

The only thing to figure out is the height of the rack-too high and you risk doing weird things to the cheese if the broiler cycles on, too low and you get out of the heat trapped in the top of the oven which is necessary to keep up with the steel. And either way I wait 5 min or so to allow the steel to come back to temp between pies.

Another tip I've found indispensible-on the wooden peel, semolina flour works 10x better at allowing the pie to move off the peel than white flour, particularly if you use higher hydration dough. Some folks use cornmeal, which works well but you can taste it and feel the texture, not so with semolina. Caputo sells semolina in small bags.

And of course, cold ferment the dough for no less than 2 and up to 7 days...
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Greg Lepore
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05 Ducati 749s (wrecked, stupidly)
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05 ST3s (unfinished business)
Old 06-09-2025, 06:43 AM
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