The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

At my house we have this thing that's 8 ceramic tiles in an aluminum tray, that we got as a gift. The tiles have gradually cracked over ~ 20 years, but they still work. The rest of the family likes them better, they transfer heat to the bottom of the pizza quickly when it goes into the oven. You do have to figure out how to slide a pizza on and off of them. They "season" kind of like an iron pan -- we don't wash them after every use. Then again our perforated aluminum pizza pan is also heavily seasoned and we don't scrub it either.

When the tiles finally crumble to bits, if I don't find identical replacements, I'll probably get a piece of steel. I wonder how aluminum would work... I sometimes see pieces of it in the scrap bin, with small holes drilled and tapped, but I don't think that would adversely affect pizza.

I've read a lot about pizza making, and have satisfied myself that the home cook needs to give themselves some leeway as to how "authentic" or "particular" they want to be about it. Depending on where you live, it might be better than commercial pizza by default. You can make it as heavy or light on cheese as you want, and maybe not feel bad about having it more often. You can surround it with salad, wine, and the company of your fellow humans. As one who really doesn't enjoy restaurants at all, the home cooking experience is just better.

Similar dough and process leads to nice foccacia and bread sticks.

And, how would Italy have risen to greatness as a nation if there was no margin of error on making pizza at home?

Experiment and enjoy!

The role of a pizza stone is to provide heat from the bottom. The important part is how much heat is released over what time. If you have an oven that is very hot, you find yourself needing a stone that doesn’t transfer as much heat (e.g. made from clay) , because your bottom will burn (with a coridierite stone for example). In ovens, you need all the heat you can get. From what I’ve heard baking steels work best for ovens.

Pizza is one of my standard food items. E.g., I get bread and pizza flour in 25 pound bags from Sam's Club. Each batch of dough uses 650 ml water, 1 tablespoon of Fleischmann's active dry yeast, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 kilogram of the flour. I end up with 8 chunks of pizza dough. So, each chunk of dough is good for one pizza for one.

No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F wood-fired pizza ovens, etc. I don't even want to warm up the oven in my kitchen stove.

So, I put the pizza in just a clean, dry standard cast iron frying pan, put on a glass cover from a glass casserole dish set, and set the stack on a standard stove burner for 22 minutes.

Doing that, the bottom got done while the top was still not hot enough, so to insulate the bottom I set the dough on a round sheet of Teflon. Cut the sheet from a long roll from Amazon intended for drying fruit or some such.

Works fine. Get a good pizza for $1- each.

Ah, the BBQ is better: Picnic pork shoulder, ~9 pounds, skin side down, on a rack, in an uncovered roasting pan, in a 200 F oven to an internal temperature of 175 F, separated, chopped, sauced, warmed in a microwave, with coleslaw. ~$2 per sandwich.

Or a 1/2 pound of 80% lean ground beef, frozen, as a round slice from a 5 pound tube from WalMart, in a cast iron frying pan, ..., with a sauce of heavy cream, beef consomme, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, etc. -- fake, cheap, Steak Diane!

> No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F wood-fired pizza ovens, etc

If you make pizza a lot, consider also the middle way of gas-fired "portable" ovens, the likes of Ooni or Roccbox. My experience was very positive.

The paper recommends against baking pizza on steel because this would cook the pizza too fast, but this is only true at the temperatures of pizza-specific ovens (paper says 620F / 325C). If you're trying to cook a pizza at home in an oven that only goes up to 550F / 290C the steel helps a lot to make up for the oven not being quite hot enough.

(I use a pizza stone, though, mostly because that's what I already have)