Peter Reinhart's "American Pie" has certainly raised the bar for my
homemade pizza. For baking he recommends baking on pizza stone with the
oven on its highest level. A few years ago I heard Dan Wing, an author of
a book on wood-burning stone ovens, give a talk at the King Arthur Flour
Store in Norwich, Vt. He brought along his trailer-mounted stone oven and
demonstrated baking various breads in it. (I'm not kidding, he really
built a stone oven on a trailer.) He said that the oven would normally
reach a starting temperature of 700 - 750 F (chart) and then cool slowly
from there. The fire-blackened curved ceiling of the oven baked from the
top by radiation and the heavy stone floor retained the fire's heat and
baked by conduction from the bottom. At that high starting temperature it
was perfect for pizzas and other flatbreads, then as it cooled it could be
used for loaf breads, and eventually cakes and pies. I don't have a stone
oven but I have worked out a procedure that comes closer to the wood
burning oven environment at home than just running the oven at max
temperature. The resulting pizzas have a rustic look, cheese is browned,
the toppings maintain a fresh "al dente" taste, and the crust is fully
baked and soft inside.
1. Use a thick (1/2" to 3/4") baking stone. If 1/4" to 3/8" unglazed tiles
are all you can get use them but don't make a double layer to gain
thickness. The gap between the layers is an insulator (like a storm
window) and will stop heat from the lower layer conducting up to the bread
resting on the upper layer.
2. Preheat to 25 F below the highest setting on your oven for at least 45
min to an 1 hr.
3. Place the pizza on the baking stone and close the oven door.
4. The timing here depends on your oven and your baking
preferences. Sometime within the first minute to a minute and a half of
baking turn on the broiler and set the oven temperature to its max. (I do
it immediately after closing the door).
5. The boiler will be on for most of the next few minutes, raising the oven
temp to max. The hot broiler element will add its radiation to the already
hot oven and bake from the top while the hot stone bakes from the
bottom. The bake should last no more than 5 or 6 minutes. Full fat (whole
milk) mozzarella and other aged soft cheeses will brown beautifully, fresh
mozzarella will melt into the sauce and Peter's fresh tomato sauces will
cook and thicken, all in 5 minutes. The rim of pizza dough will brown with
dark "highlights". If a large bubble forms in the rim it will probably
burn. Just flake it off after the pizza comes out of the oven. It may
take a few tries to get the timing right for your oven but the taste and
look of a hot-baked pizza is spectacular. The top cheese layer should have
lots of browned cheese color, the cheesy sauce will be dark and bubbling,
the dough edge should be various shades of brown and the bottom of the
pizza should be a fairly uniform light brown. If the bottom bakes darker
than the top, turn the broiler on earlier, and vice versa. The transition
from "done" to "burned" may be no more than 30 secs. so don't get distracted.
Some ingredients like sausage and pieces of hard veggies like broccoli,
should be pre-cooked to just underdone. Caramelized onions should be
pre-cooked to soft but yellow/tan, not brown. Thin veggies, sliced
mushrooms, shrimp (in pieces), clams, cured meats, etc do not have to be
pre-cooked. Hard cheeses, like Parmigiano-Reggiano, should be either
mixed with melting cheeses or added after the bake. They will burn if they
stay dry and exposed on top.
Peter's White Clam Pizza done this way is superb. The clams are cooked but
still soft, the "white" top layer is speckled with caramelized cheese,
clams, and herb oil bubbles and its all rimmed with a firm crust with a
soft interior. =20
Werner