Baking Pizza in a Home Oven

Ingredients

• Store-bought dough (1 pound)
• Crushed tomatoes (100g)
• Mozzarella (whole milk, shredded, 150g)

Then, for garnish:

• Oregano
• Fresh basil leaves
• 5g of salt

Steps

1. Preheat oven for 1 hour. Ends up somewhere between 450 and 500°F.
2. Preheat pizza steel for 30 min on top rack underneath broiler, reaches about 620°F.
3. Rest dough at room temperature for about 1.5 hours. It felt like it had reached about room temp.
4. Add salt to the tomato sauce.
5. Grate cheese.
6. Stretch the dough.
7. Dust the pizza peel with flour.
8. Remove excess flour from dough.
9. Place dough on peel.
10. Add the tomato sauce.
11. Add cheese.
12. Place dough on steel; still on top rack with the broiler on.
13. Bake for 2.5 minutes.
14. Take out to add cheese.
15. Move to bottom rack for another 2.5 minutes.
16. Move back to top rack for 1 min.

Results (markedly better again than last time):

• Top: https://drive.proton.me/urls/R5NC0NVP1M#lEvW9YodqSZR
• Bottom: https://drive.proton.me/urls/RYQPFZJSCR#LQKeZiiTbp9G
• Bottom (another slice): https://drive.proton.me/urls/N7VM0C48P8#XSP9bVZUyxUz

Got the thermo gun today and played around with it. If I put the steel on the bottom rack (which is directly above the heat source), it hovers at around 450 after about 40 min. But on the top rack with the broiler on, it hovered at around 620 after another 30 min. (It may reach that temp sooner, I didn’t check.) 620 is plenty hot to make pizza.

The dough came out really good this time. It was light and fluffy in most places, even had some crispy air bubbles. I had previously overcooked it – I think that’s why it got so hard last time.

I found myself moaning as I ate this pie and wanting more afterwards.