I've been working on my pizza for quite a few years and I never
achieved an authentic result with a pizza stone. No matter how long
you preheat it, it will never get hotter than the maximum temperature
of your oven, which in my case is 230 C/450F. A proper wood fired
pizza oven will get to at least 400C/750F. Jeff Varasano's famous
pizza page describes how he gets around this by breaking the safety
lock on his electric oven so that he can cook his pizza during the
very hot oven self clean program which is designed to burn off any
food residues from the oven walls. Unfortunately, he's destroyed
several ovens this way. There is an alternative! You can get a 14"
wide cast iron pizza pan which is designed to be heated on the stove
top. You slide the pizza on to the *very* hot pan and the base will
cook in two or three minutes. Then you put the topped pizza under the
broiler (what we call a grill in the UK) to finish cooking the
toppings. The improvement over the oven + pizza stone version is
simply staggering, the high heat makes all the difference, as the
underside of the base will char, giving a deep, complex, smoky
flavour. I've written about my recipe and method in great detail at
www.breadsecrets.com/pizza.html and there are links to the
appropriate cast iron pans on amazon.
Regards,
- guy